Plastic pellet spills growing environmental crisis for Sri Lanka

By Kamanthi Wickramasinghe 

Colombo, June 26 (Daily Mirror) - Millions of plastic pellets continue to drift towards Sri Lankan shores following two shipwrecks that occurred off the southern and south-western coasts of India. 

Following the two incidents, environmental groups have observed a spike in plastic pellet pollution along the western coastline of Sri Lanka from Jaffna, Mannar and Puttalam all the way up to Galle. 

Sampling operations conducted by Greenpeace South Asia and other organisations on the shores of two Indian states and Sri Lanka to confirm the nature, the spill of coated chemicals and origins of the plastic pellets indicate that the pellets originated from MSC ELSA 3. 

During a recent media briefing, environmental groups and civil rights activists highlighted the need to have stronger regional mechanisms to hold polluters accountable as a country that had to bear the brunt of the X-Press Pearl disaster, acknowledged as one of the worst maritime disasters that happened in Sri Lankan waters.

Environmental activists underscored the negative impacts of plastic pellet spills on sensitive marine ecosystems in Sri Lanka and the livelihoods of coastal communities. 

MSC ELSA 3 was a container ship sailing under the Liberian flag, which sank off the coast of Kochi reportedly due to an operational problem. On June 9, the Singapore-flagged merchant vessel MV WAN HAI 503 caught fire off the Beypore coast in Kerala.