Looking down into the water that lies beneath the ramshackle houses of Sihanouk, Cambodia, it is hard to imagine that the sea is there at all.
Instead, there is dense layer upon layer of plastic waste clogging the water, piling up around poles that support the wooden homes, carpeting the beach.
Floating rubbish in Sihanouk, Cambodia New images of from Sihanouk, in the country’s south west, depict in horrifying detail the extent of Cambodia’s growing problem of plastic pollution and how the tide of unbiodegradable rubbish has become part of the fabric of the lives of communities living in poverty.
“There seems to be no empathy for the fact that for the people living in Sihanouk, there isn’t a water filtration system,” said Peren.
“Their tap water is so dirty and undrinkable, that to stay alive they have to buy bottled water and then live among the rubbish it creates because there’s nowhere to put it.” Over the past 15 to 20 years, Cambodia’s water system has improved faster than most of its regional neighbours, though sanitation efforts have mainly been centred in the capital Phnom Penh.
However, according to Water.Org, about four million people in Cambodia still lack access to safe water, leaving them with no alternative but to buy endless bottled water, perpetuating the environmentally destructive cycle.
The view from a home on the wharf Peren added: “There’s a total blame game that goes on about who generates rubbish and all this plastic but it’s a human story at the end of the day because this plastic waste that all the people here live amongst is unavoidable- they are not about to feed their babies the black muddy liquid that comes out of the taps, it’s poison.” With no systemised waste collection service in the area, – almost every plastic bottle ends up in the water below, along with most other rubbish.
Sorted cans are loaded on to a truck at a recycling plant by the Sihanouk port Peren described witnessing fishing boats coming into the wharf after long trips and dumping months of rubbish straight into the water and families living in the shanty houses on stilts doing the same with rubbish from their homes, the majority of which was often plastic packaging and bottles.
The plastic bags which also make up the dense blanket of rubbish also speak to Cambodia’s issue with consumption of single use plastic.
In urban areas, each person uses an estimated 2,000 plastic bags annually, 10 times more than consumers in China and the EU, and an average of 10m plastic bags are used every day in Phnom Penh alone, according to anti-poverty organization ACRA in 2015.

Some residents say not enough has changed to make Flint water safe.
Gov.
Activists are calling for the bottled water supply to resume, saying 12,000 homes still have not had their lead or galvanized pipes replaced.
Snyder’s administration has made it clear the state-funded bottled water supply will not be coming back, saying "thorough and extensive scientific data" influenced their decision to end it.
These same activists have rallied every year on the anniversary of the water switch.
"This guy swore that he was the nerd and he was going to do everything for the state of Michigan.
And he has devastated this state — him alone with the DEQ and the EPA.
And we’re tired of it.
And they’re gonna hear us roar.
We are Flintstones.

As Flint, Michigan, moves on from its water crisis, residents still lack faith in elected leaders who didn’t do enough to prevent lead from poisoning the city’s water supply back in 2014.
Up until last week, the state provided bottled water to those who didn’t trust their tap water.
State and federal agencies, along with independent experts, have tested the water and affirmed these safe lead levels.
The federal lead action level is 15 ppb.” And last September, Virginia Tech researcher Marc Edwards also concluded Flint’s water was safe to drink.
Rick Snyder to continue the bottle water program — at least until the end of the year when Snyder leaves office.
“We’re trying to re-establish trust when trust has been broken in the city of Flint,” she said in an interview with The Detroit News.
Snyder wrote to Weaver, detailing the state’s rationale for ending bottled water.
He said Flint’s water is testing “the same or better than similar cities across the state.” And the city’s water has less lead than Chicago, Cincinnati and Philadelphia, among others, he said.
The state is rightly continuing with other efforts to help Flint move on, including boosted health care and nutrition services, as well as education and economic development programs.
Ending the bottled water program means that the state will have to work that much harder to rebuild trust with Flint residents.

A finding of high levels of lead in Chicago tap water, reported in an investigative study by the Chicago Tribune on April 13, has alarmed residents and led city officials to propose solutions to what is emerging as a serious and costly public health problem.
We want to get as much data as we can.” However, while the Tribune tested Chicago’s tap water to check compliance with FDA standards for bottled water of 5 parts of lead per billion, the city is held to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency lead and copper rule, which is 15 ppb, according to the EPA website.
“Chicago’s water consistently meets and exceeds the U.S. EPA’s standards for clean, high-quality drinking water,” Megan Vidis, a spokeswoman for the Chicago Department of Water Management, said in an April 19 email statement.
Preventing lead exposure is critical to improving school performance, according to a April 2015 Environmental Health Journal report.
“What’s ironic to me is that we were the last city to require the use of lead service lines up until they were banned in Chicago in 1986, but literally up until that day they were still putting them in,” said James Montgomery, an associate professor of Environmental Science at DePaul University.
The bottom line is that would be costly.” Montgomery questioned how Chicago can replace and pay for new service lines when 85 percent of homes in the city have lead pipes.
It is expensive to replace lead pipes and that cost will probably be passed on to renters, Montgomery said.
Using certified water filters for drinking water is a preventive measure, he added.
“The ultimate solution is to replace the lead pipes, but it is expensive to remove all those service lines,” Yeggy said.
“And that construction activity, including repair and replacement of the service lines, can disturb sediments that have built up in the pipes and the plumbing, and some of those sediments have high amounts of lead.” Removing the lead pipes should be a shared responsibility between property owners and the city, said Joseph Fong, president of the Association of Condominium, Townhouse and Homeowners Associations.

Tiny plastic bits contaminate bottled water sold around the world, a new study finds.
Researchers tested more than 250 bottles of water.
Mason and her team tested the water on behalf of Orb Media, a nonprofit journalism group based in the United States.
Tiny bits of plastic have turned up in rivers, lakes and oceans.
Other microplastic beads go in some toothpastes and skin-care products.
The most common type of plastic that Mason and her team found in bottled water was polypropylene (Pah-lee-PROH-puh-leen).
So how do they get into bottled water?
And earlier studies had found plastic bits could come out in tap water.
The new study is the first to find microplastics in bottled water, its authors say.
In fact, Mason notes, her team found at least twice as many particles in bottled water as earlier tests had found in tap water.

That’s all it takes.
One, small change in your every day habits can have an everlasting impact on the environment.
The use and disposal of plastic water bottles are detrimental to our planet today.
According to National Geographic, 91 percent of plastic is not recycled.
Plastic is not biodegradable, which leads bottled water to not break down naturally.
This isn’t the first animal that was famous because they were harmed by plastic in oceans.
Studies have even shown that tap water may be safer and healthier to drink rather than bottled.
Therefore tap water actually has more credible regulations in comparison to bottled water.
Over days and weeks of buying bottled water the cost adds up.
Purchasing a cheap, reusable water bottle from Amazon or other local stores and refilling it daily is healthier for your wallet and the environment.

Volunteers with Royalty Unite collected and loaded donated bottled water into trucks bound for Flint, Mich., Saturday, April 21, 2018, at the Frederick Douglass Community Association in Toledo.
RELATED CONTENT: Toledoans host water drive for Flint Royalty Unite founder Sheena Barnes is from Flint originally and organized the drive to help families who have been cut off after the state of Michigan stopped supplying bottled water to Flint residents.
Under direction from a state-appointed emergency manager in 2014, the city of Flint city switched its water source from Detroit municipal water to the Flint River.
The water wasn’t treated properly with corrosion control, exposing the population of about 100,000 people to elevated levels of lead leached from the city’s water pipelines.
Though lead levels have gone down and Flint has switched back to Detroit water, many people in Flint worry about the water quality.
Ms. Barnes said they received donations from a number of organizations and individuals, including the NAACP, Toledoans for Safe Water, and Toledo Public School students.
So many cases of water were donated, Royalty Unite had to rent a second truck to transport the water to a church in Flint.

A federal judge won’t force the state to immediately resume giving out bottled water to Flint residents affected by the city’s lead-tainted tap water crisis.
The decision Friday concerns the case of Flint resident Allen Bryant Jr. A recently filed lawsuit says that Bryant and other residents still have dangerous levels of lead in their tap water.
The state announced it was ending the program earlier this month and closed its remaining distribution sights last week.
Following the hearing, Hunter Shkolnik, the plaintiff’s lead attorney, said he felt that the judge had looked at the facts and determined that Bryant may not be "the right plaintiff" to request the injunction.
"But there are a lot of other people [in Flint] that have homes that have lead levels that are hundreds of times higher than they should be," Shkolnik said.
Shkolnik said that a lot of people in Flint don’t trust the filters that the state has provided.
However, attorneys for the state argued that there’s "submitted proof" that the the filters are effective for lead removal.
They said state had the right to stop providing bottled water.
Earlier this week, Flint Mayor Karen Weaver said she was exploring "legal options" following an unsuccessful meeting with Gov.
Snyder about restarting the water distribution program.

A judge has denied a man’s request to resume the program that distributed free bottled water to the residents of Flint, Michigan.
According to the complaint, Bryant’s home registered more than 1,300 parts per billion (ppb) of lead when tested earlier this year, MLive reported.
But Bryant is no longer living at the home, and when asked, turned down an opportunity to have a water filtration system added, Levy noted, MLive reported.
The hearing held in downtown Ann Arbor lasted a couple hours, according to MLive.
Rick Snyder said then the state would stop supplying free bottled water to Flint residents because the water quality there had "tested below action levels of the federal Lead and Copper Rule for nearly two years."
But resident Arthur Woodson said promises haven’t been kept and people still need help.
"It seems like we worse now than when the crisis first started," he told ABC News.
Resident Juani Olivares told ABC News folks just aren’t ready.
"The children don’t want to touch the faucets, they are traumatized," Olivares said.
Olivares, who is the president and CEO of the Genesee County Hispanic Latin Collaborative-La Placita, said there’s still a lot of work to do.

State attorneys argued the relief Bryant sought wasn’t warranted partly because the city of Flint is in compliance with the federal Lead and Copper Rule.
"He further stated he intended to abandon the home, which was damaged due to a pipe that had burst," the state’s response to the lawsuit stated, a point that was debated in court on Friday, with Bryant’s attorney arguing his client does want to return to his home but it’s not safe to do so because of lead in the water.
Teams of attorneys for both the state defendants and Bryant appeared in court on Friday, along with Flint city attorneys.
He argued the state hasn’t done enough to address the Flint water crisis to warrant discontinuing bottled water distribution.
Defending his client, Shkolnik said Bryant left his home to care for his mother, who has since died, and his intention was always to move back to his home on Oren Avenue eventually.
At that point in the hearing, the judge decided to get Bryant on the phone.
He seemed to indicate he didn’t trust that simply installing a filter was going to solve his water problems.
The state’s decision to discontinue bottled water came after testing under the Lead and Copper Rule showed Flint’s 90th-percentile lead levels were at 4 ppb in sampling this year.
He argued the state should have to pay for bottled water for them until the problem is fixed.
The judge offered to give the state attorneys Bryant’s phone number to try to make that happen.