What does pollution actually look like up close? Statistics about tonnes of plastic and micrograms of fine dust are hard to picture, so this collection lets photographs do the work. The twenty-one scenes below come from news agencies, conservation photographers and campaign groups, and they were taken across four continents: a hermit crab living in a toy ball, storks feeding on a landfill, schoolchildren walking through smog in Lahore, a boatman swimming through rubbish in Manila Bay.
None of these photos is a freak event. Each one stands for a problem that scientists and city governments have measured for years: plastic that ends up in the sea, waste that reaches wild animals, smoke and dust that people breathe, rivers that serve as open sewers, and artificial light that hides the night sky. We have grouped the pictures by theme and added a short note to each one explaining where it was taken, what it shows and why it matters. At the end you will find a quick reality check on a statistic that often travels with photo sets like this one, plus a few practical steps that make a measurable difference.
Wild animals living with our waste
1. A hermit crab in a plastic ball. Hermit crabs borrow empty shells for protection and swap them as they grow, so when shells are scarce they will crawl into bottle caps, cans or, as here, a toy football. Researchers studying remote islands have reported that plastic containers can also act as traps, because crabs climb in and cannot climb out. Photo: East News.
2. Storks standing on a rubbish dump. The credit belongs to Carla Rhodes, a photographer known for documenting greater adjutant storks that forage on a landfill in Assam, India. The greater adjutant is one of the rarest storks in the world, with an estimated 1,360 to 1,510 mature birds left; it was long listed as Endangered and is now classed as Near Threatened thanks to community protection of its nesting trees. The birds eat carrion and offal, which is why open dumps attract them, along with the risk of swallowing plastic and toxic scraps. Photo: Carla Rhodes / Solent News / East News.
3. A monk seal with a plastic bottle. Both surviving monk seal species, the Hawaiian and the Mediterranean, are endangered, so every hazard on their haul-out beaches counts. Young seals are curious and will mouth or play with debris, which is how ingestion and entanglement often begin. Photo: Paulo de Oliveira / Biosphoto / East News.
4. A black bear carrying a rubbish bag in Canada. Bears that learn to find food in bins lose their fear of people and often end up being relocated or destroyed, which is why Canadian and American parks repeat the warning that a fed bear is a dead bear. Bear-proof bins and keeping rubbish locked away until collection day are simple fixes that work. Photo: East News.
5. A sea lion with fishing net around its neck. Lost or discarded nets, often called ghost nets, keep catching animals long after a fisher has stopped using them. As a young sea lion grows, a loop of net tightens and can cut deep into the skin; rescue teams on several coasts capture entangled animals to cut the material free. Photo: Paulo de Oliveira / Biosphoto.
6. A dolphin with six-pack rings (composite). This image is a composite, meaning it was assembled from more than one photograph, so it illustrates a real risk rather than recording a single moment. Ring-shaped packaging is a known hazard because an animal can slip its head or snout through a loop and be unable to shake it off. Many brewers have since moved to cardboard or other alternatives. Photo: Paulo de Oliveira / Biosphoto / East News.
7. Goldfish and turtles sold in plastic bags in Vietnam. Live pets sold in sealed bags are a common sight at markets across Asia and beyond. The picture raises two questions at once: animal welfare during transport and sale, and the sheer number of single-use bags that leave a market every day. Photo: East News.
Air you can see, and nights you cannot
8. Masked conscripts in South Korea, 14 January 2019. In mid-January 2019 a severe episode of fine dust settled over the Seoul region. Studies cited by South Korean authorities suggest that dust blown from China makes up a large share of the country's fine particle pollution on the worst days, while domestic coal plants, diesel vehicles and industry add the rest; the government has even classed air pollution as a social disaster to unlock emergency funds. Photo: Jung Yeon-je / AFP / East News.
9. Mothers and children walking to school in Lahore, 17 January 2019. Lahore's winter smog has become a yearly season of its own, when vehicle exhaust, brick kilns, industry and crop burning combine with cold, still air. Schools in Punjab have repeatedly been closed or had hours changed during the worst weeks, and children are among the most vulnerable to fine particles. Photo: Arif Ali / AFP / East News.
10. A family crossing a road in Seoul, 5 March 2019. Early March 2019 brought some of the worst fine-dust readings Seoul had recorded, prompting emergency curbs on old diesel vehicles and public works. Masks, air-quality apps and text alerts have become part of daily life for many Korean families. Photo: Ed Jones / AFP / East News.
11. A selfie in Tiananmen Square during heavy smog. Beijing became a symbol of urban air pollution in the early 2010s. Since then a national clean-air plan, coal-to-gas switching and tighter vehicle rules have brought its fine-particle levels down considerably, a reminder that strong policy can clear the air within a decade. Photo: Wang Xin / Imaginechina / East News.
(The Instagram post originally embedded here is no longer available.)
12. Light pollution. This spot once held an Instagram photo about light pollution. The issue itself is well documented: about 83% of people live under light-polluted skies, and a 2016 study estimated that a third of humanity can no longer see the Milky Way from home. Artificial light also confuses sea turtle hatchlings, disorients migrating birds and disrupts night-flying insects. Shielded fixtures that point light downward, warmer bulbs and timers reduce the glare without leaving streets dark.
Rivers, canals and coastlines
13. A makeshift bridge over a sewage canal in Danapur, India. Danapur sits on the edge of Patna in Bihar. Open drains like this one carry household wastewater through neighbourhoods where children play, and they are a well-known route for diarrhoeal disease when sewage treatment lags behind population growth. Photo: Xavier Galiana / AFP / East News.
14. Collecting recyclables on the Arabian Sea shore. Informal waste pickers recover a large share of the plastic that does get recycled in South Asian cities, usually without protective gear or steady pay. Their work keeps material out of the sea, which is why many cities now try to bring pickers into formal collection schemes. Photo: AP / East News; depositphotos.com.
15. Boys collecting items from a river in Bojongsoang, Indonesia. Bojongsoang lies in the Bandung area of West Java, on the Citarum River basin. The Citarum is often described as one of the most polluted rivers in the world: the Asian Development Bank called it the dirtiest in 2008, and textile factories, household waste and sewage all feed into it. Indonesia launched a seven-year clean-up programme in 2018 that brought in thousands of soldiers to help. Photo: Timur Matahari / AFP / East News.
16. A heavily polluted area of Nairobi. The caption does not name the exact place, but Nairobi's eastern districts are home to the Dandora dumpsite, the city's main landfill, where waste is regularly burned in the open. Kenya introduced one of the world's strictest bans on plastic carrier bags in 2017. Photo: Tony Karumba / AFP / East News.
17. Children hunting frogs in polluted water, Rio de Janeiro. Water quality in and around Rio's Guanabara Bay drew international attention before the 2016 Olympics, when sailing events were held there. Much of the city's sewage still reaches the bay without full treatment, and the children who play in local streams are the most exposed. Photo: AA / ABACA / East News.
18. A boy beside a rubbish-filled creek in Manila. Many informal homes in Metro Manila stand directly over or beside waterways. When creeks clog with waste, the rainy season turns them into flood channels that carry rubbish straight to Manila Bay. Photo: AFP / East News.
19. A boatman swimming through plastic in Manila Bay. Greenpeace photographer Gavin Newman took this picture in 2010 during the group's work on marine plastic in the Philippines. The country is regularly ranked among the largest sources of ocean plastic, and in 2019 the government began a large rehabilitation programme for Manila Bay; the Supreme Court had already ordered agencies to clean it up in 2008. Photo: Greenpeace / Gavin Newman.
20. A polluted beach in Hong Kong. This Greenpeace post shows a Hong Kong shoreline covered in debris. Beaches facing the sea around the Pearl River Delta can receive large pulses of floating rubbish after storms and heavy rain, which volunteers then clear by hand.
Campaigns that push back
21. A Greenpeace poster about plastic straws. Straws became a symbol of single-use plastic in the late 2010s, and campaigns like this one asked cafés, bars and large chains to stop handing them out by default. Straws are only a small fraction of ocean plastic by weight, but campaigners argue that changing a visible habit opens the door to larger changes in packaging. Photo: East News.
A reality check on the numbers
Photo sets like this one often open with the claim that 100,000 marine animals die every year from plastic entanglement. The figure is repeated widely, but its origin is weak: it appears to trace back to older estimates about marine mammals and fishing gear, and it is usually quoted without a method. That does not make the problem smaller. Plastic is known to harm hundreds of marine species through entanglement and ingestion, and an estimated 8 million tonnes of larger plastic items reach the oceans every year, with rivers in Asia carrying a large share.
The air pictures deserve the same care. Smog and fine dust are linked to heart disease, lung disease and shorter lives, but the levels vary hugely between cities and seasons, and several cities shown here have improved since these photos were taken.
What actually helps
- Cut single-use items you do not need. Refillable bottles and bags, and saying no to default straws and cutlery, reduce the waste that leaks into rivers.
- Bin rubbish securely. Closed bins keep wildlife out and stop wind and rain from carrying litter to drains.
- Support collection, not only recycling. In many countries the main gap is basic waste collection; groups that fund it, or that support waste pickers, prevent leakage at the source.
- Join a clean-up. Beach and river clean-ups remove debris and record what is found, which helps campaigners target the worst items.
- Check the air and reduce exposure. On high-pollution days, local alerts and fewer outdoor workouts are sensible steps; anyone with heart or lung problems should talk to a doctor about extra precautions.
- Dim the night. Shielded, downward-facing outdoor lights on timers save energy and protect wildlife.
The photographs are hard to look at, but almost every problem in them has a known fix that some city or country has already tried with success.
Sources: Photo credits as listed under each image (East News, AFP, AP, Biosphoto, Solent News, Imaginechina, ABACA, Greenpeace). Background: Wikipedia: Marine plastic pollution; Wikipedia: Greater adjutant; Wikipedia: Citarum River; Wikipedia: Air pollution in South Korea; Wikipedia: Manila Bay; Wikipedia: Light pollution; Greenpeace Southeast Asia.
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