Inaccessible Island’s rubbish problem has been bottling up for years

INACCESSIBLE ISLAND is well named. It is an uninhabited rock in the South Atlantic ocean that belongs to Tristan da Cunha, a British dependency which itself vies with Easter Island for the honour of being the most remote inhabited place on the planet. Go there, though, and you will find its coast is covered with litter.That, at least, has been the experience of Peter Ryan of the University of Cape Town, in South Africa. Since 1984 Dr Ryan, an ornithologist, has been visiting Inaccessible and, along with his other studies, recording the litter stranded on the island’s beaches. This week, in the , he has published the results.