With its luxurious resorts, white-sand beaches and crystal-clear waters, the Maldives is known as a luxury destination. Its tourism industry has been steadily growing the past few years. In 2013, the stunning archipelago located in the Indian Ocean welcomed more than a million visitors, according to Maldives' Minivan News.

But there's a dark side to paradise.

Not far from the Maldives' capital of Male, only a half-hour boat ride away, mountains of trash and waste pile up on Thilafushi island, marring the seascape of the normally idyllic archipelago. The artificial island, created as a municipal landfill, receives almost 400 tons of garbage a year, mostly collected from luxury hotels, according to BBC News.

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Filmmaker Alison Teal, 27, from Hawaii was disturbed by the amount of plastic waste that washed up on while staying in the Maldives.Accompanied by Australian photographer Mark Tipple and his colleague Sarah Lee, the group took the astounding images (see slideshow above) and footage to document the luxury destination's waste problem.

"I was overwhelmingly shocked by the amount of plastic rubbish which covered the uninhabited, picturesque island we stayed on," Teal told Caters News Agency. "This was only one island—I couldn't bear to imagine what the other 1,200 islands looked like, covered in rubbish."

Teal,who supports organizations that recycle plastic into fashion, including bikinis and jackets, has made a documentary about her time in the Maldives.

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"To leave the island we actually made a raft out of bottles," she said. A"s we paddled to our rescue boat, I swore I would come back and do something about the plastic pollution."

Compelled to take action after witnessing the waste problem firsthand, Alison took part in a beach clean-up, with a team of volunteers and now helps companies which make rubbish into clothes.

"I collected rubbish in an effort to save the highly threatened biosphere," Teal said. "In only half an hour, covering about 50 feet of beach we gathered a huge amount of plastic bottles which the villagers took great pride in making plastic fashion."

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