Oct 3rd 2019INACCESSIBLE 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 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, he has published the results.Choose us for news analysis that respects your time and intelligenceSubscribe to The EconomistWe filter out the noise of the daily news cycle and analyse the trends that matterWe give you rigorous, deeply researched and fact-checked journalism. That’s why Americans named us their most trusted news source in 2017Available wherever you are—in print, digital and, uniquely, in audio, fully narrated by professional broadcastersThis website adheres to all nine of NewsGuard‘s standards of credibility and transparency.ORContinue reading this articleRegister with an email address