The river you can’t see for rubbish

IF it were not for his boat, you would think this fisherman was sitting on a landfill site.

In fact, he is trawling the river for waste plastic to help him eke out a living.

Once a tropical paradise, the Citarum in Java, Indonesia, is now said to be the dirtiest in the world. Clogged with household waste, toxic chemicals dumped by textile factories and dead animals, it has lost 60 per cent of its fish stocks. But more than 35million people still rely on it for drinking and washing.

The fisherman in the picture, called Herman, told Channel 4’s Reported World, which goes out tonight: ‘I don’t catch fish any more … they’re floating on the surface … I’m sure everyone knows the result of dumping rubbish like this. There are rules, but nobody is enforcing them.’

Locals say textile factories illegally dump chemicals into the river at night and some nearby village wells contain four times the recommended safe levels of mercury.

There are claims some high street brands could be partly to blame for the torrent of pollution. Greenpeace reported last year that one of the largest textile firms on the Citarum – PT Gistex – has had a ‘business relationship’ with Gap, H&M and Adidas.

The charity found the manufacturer’s wastewater contained high doses of several toxic substances.