This year, Alison Teal arrived on a Maldivian island and ready to do 21 days without food or water for Discovery Channel’s reality show, she was overwhelmed with how much plastic trash she saw washed up across the small island. She even handcrafted a raft from the pollution and paddled back to civilization, thus winning the challenge. Teal filmed her return to the Maldives as a part of her online film series Alison’s Adventures. Her goal was to clean the island while raising awareness about plastic pollution. With permission from the country’s government, Teal and her crew documented the Maldives’ Trash Island, also known as Thilafushi. Only a few miles away from the Maldivian capital of Malé, Thilafushi is an artificial island and acts as one of the country’s main landfills. About 300 to 400 tons of trash are dumped on the island every day. Credit: PlayGround
