02 October, 2018
A child who collects recyclable material lies on a mattress surrounded by garbage
floating on the Pasig River, in Manila, Philippines.
The Pasig River was declared biologically dead in the 1990s, due to a combination
of industrial pollution and waste being dumped by nearby communities living without adequate sanitation infrastructure. A 2017 report by Nature Communications cites the Pasig as one of 20 most polluted rivers in the world, with up to 63,700 tons of plastic deposited into the ocean each year. Efforts are being made to clean up the Pasig, which were recognized by an international prize in 2018, but in parts of the river the waste is still so dense that it is possible to walk on top of the garbage.
Mário Cruz
Mário Cruz was born in 1987, in Lisbon, Portugal. Cruz is an independent photographer focused on social injustice and human rights issues. He studied photojourn...
