"A plastic apocalypse": this tourist destination is to be avoided at all costs this summer

This trendy destination is at the top of the list of tourist spots to avoid at all costs in 2025.

Pollution, landscape erosion, destruction of natural habitats... Many tourist destinations around the world are now weakened by mass tourism. Fodor's Travel, an American travel guide, compiles a blacklist of these destinations every year. This year, 2025, Fodor's No List is warning of a destination popular with the French, supposedly for its white and black sand beaches, ideal for swimming.

Under the weight of its popularity, a different side emerges once you arrive. The once-pristine beaches of this island have been literally disfigured by mounds of cups, straws, toothpaste tubes, and other plastic debris. WWF has criticized the destination's tourism boom for decades, noting in a 2007 report its rapid development "without adequate planning or adherence to sustainable development rules. As a result, tourism has caused serious damage to the island's environment."

This island, beloved by tourists for the hospitality of its inhabitants and its splendid natural landscapes, is Bali in Indonesia. It was already on the Fodor's Travel blacklist in 2020. After the Covid pandemic, the resumption of travel has only intensified the damage. Its once-paradise beaches like Kuta and Seminyak "are now engulfed by mountains of trash, and local waste management systems are struggling to keep pace," Fodor's Travel points out. We are now a long way from the postcard image of the island.

One of the founders of the Balinese NGO Sungai Watch calls this situation a "plastic apocalypse." The Bali Partnership, a coalition of academics and NGOs, estimates that the island generates no less than 1.6 million tons of waste annually, including nearly 303,000 tons of plastic waste. While half of this waste is managed responsibly, nearly 33,000 tons of plastic are dumped into Bali's rivers, beaches, and marine environments each year, by 60% of residents who lack access to waste collection.

In addition, coastal water quality is threatened by pollutants, the most significant of which are "excess nutrients, organic compounds, and heavy metals from domestic wastewater, industry, mining, agriculture, and aquaculture," according to a report by the Asian Development Bank.

Despite the good intentions of locals and tourists to clean up litter on the beaches every day, Bali's most precious natural areas are on the verge of disappearing forever. While the Indonesian government has pledged to reduce plastic and waste pollution by 2025, Indonesia remains the second-largest ocean plastic polluter after China.