I grew up in a small village in Germany and remember once seeing a disused washing machine in a forest parking lot. Someone had simply disposed of their bulky waste. Even back then in the 1980s, I didn't understand this and it disturbed me.
When I was on Tenerife recently, the subject came up again. In the midst of the majestic beauty of nature, between vulcanic rocks and huge cactus plants, there were ugly remnants of human carelessness: plastic bags, packaging waste, cigarette butts and rubble like old tires.
It seemed to me that the garbage came from people who had lived in nature. Because there was a small cave there. It's quite hidden, but if you look closely, you can see it in my cover picture above on the right side. The entrance is under the large rock.
So there are people who carelessly throw away waste without thinking about the fact that this waste does not simply disappear, but has a long-term and often devastating impact on the environment.
I think this is mainly done out of great frustration by these people. But that should not gloss over these criminal activities. I don't like this "I don't care" mentality at all.
In the case of drinking cans and empty bottles that I saw, my guess is that they came from lazy walkers and party people who threw their waste into nature. But why? I would never think of throwing garbage into nature.
It even has happened that I came across pooped diapers on sandy beaches. And at the last shoot, my model stepped in human poop (dogs don't use toilet paper). How disgusting is that?
Virtual environmental clean-up
When I'm out for shoots, I often have to remove garbage from my pictures later using Photoshop. Faking a better world by removing cigarette butts, bottle caps and bits of plastic. That's really annoying.
And it's also really sad and disgusting to see rubble and waste lying around in the middle of beautiful nature. This is not an issue in Spain only. I came across waste in nature, pretty much wherever I have photographed.
I wrote this article, solely out of frustration because there was so much waste on my last shoot. I am not addressing this article to you, because I am sure that you are not one of those people who dispose of their garbage in this way. I will probably never understand why there are people who do this, though.