These Images Illustrate How Litter Is Destroying Myanmar's Famous Landmarks

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Photo of Yangon Government Office by Si Thu Aung. Source: Facebook album of Si Mon, used with permission.

Pictures of Myanmar's landmarks photoshopped to include litter in the foreground have gone viral among Facebook users in the country. The images, which highlight the worsening garbage problem in Myanmar's famous tourism destinations, were created by artist Si Thu Aung, who encouraged people to share them to raise awareness about the need to protect the country's landmarks.

Garbage pollution is a concern raised by many experts, who urge Myanmar to embrace a more sustainable model of development. Even Nobel Laureate and top government minister Aung San Suu Kyi led a nationwide garbage collection campaign at the end of 2015 to demonstrate the urgency of addressing the problem.

The photos were uploaded to Facebook by Si Mon, who explained how picking up litter can uplift the image of the country:

အခုဆို နိုင်ငံအပြောင်းအလဲတွေ ကြောင့်နိုင်ငံခြားဧည့်သည်တွေ ဝင်လာရင် ဘယ်နေရာကြည့်ကြည့်သန့်သန့်ရှင်းရှင်း သပ်သပ်ရပ်ရပ်နဲ့ ကိုယ့်နိုင်ငံအလှကို ကမ္ဘာသိအောင် ပြဖို့အကောင်းဆုံးအချိန်ပါ။ သင်ကိုယ်တိုင်ကဦးဆောင်ပြီး စည်းကမ်းတကျအမှိုက်ပစ် ခြင်းအားဖြင့် သင့်ပတ်ဝန်းကျင် သာယာလှပရုံသာမက နိုင်ငံ့ဂုဏ်ကိုပါမြှင့်တင်ပေးရာ ရောက်ပါတယ်။ အဲ့တာကြောင့် သင့်အမှိုက်တစ်စကို စည်းကမ်းမဲ့တစ်ကြိမ်တစ်ခါပဲဆိုပြီး ပစ်လိုက်ပေမဲ့ လူတိုင်းအဲလိုပဲတွေး ပြီးပြစ်ကြမယ်ဆိုရင် ကြီးမားတဲ့သက်ရောက်မှု ရှိလို့ အမှိုက်ပစ်ခါနီးတိုင်း သတိဆောင်ကြပါလို့ တိုက်တွန်းအပ်ပါတယ်။

Now foreign visitors are coming because of the political change and it's time for you to show the beauty of the country to the world by being clean and organized. If you set an example by by being careful with where you throw away your trash, we can raise the standards of our country. So, if you throw out trash recklessly, even only once, and if everyone thinks the same way, it will create a huge impact. Therefore, please be mindful before you litter.

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Photo of U Bein Bridge in Mandalay by Si Thu Aung. Source: Facebook album of Si Mon, used with permission.

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Photo of Ngapali Beach by Si Thu Aung. Source: Facebook album of Si Mon, used with permission.

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Photo of Bagan by Si Thu Aung. Source: Facebook album of Si Mon, used with permission.

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Photo of Golden Monastery in Mandalay by Si Thu Aung. Source: Facebook album of Si Mon, used with permission.

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