Nurdle Free Lanka Campaign protecting Sri Lanka’s shoreline from plastic pellets

Second phase of Nurdle Free Lanka campaign

Volunteers at work

‘The Pearl Protectors’, a youth-led marine conservation volunteer organisation, recently held a beach clean-up campaign at Kinross beach in Wellawatta, with the participation of the organisation’s volunteer collective and concerned individuals. 
The campaign intends to reduce the impact of plastic pellets, also known as nurdles, on the country’s western shoreline. The organisation is spearheading coordinated efforts to mitigate the pollution caused due to nurdles spilt onto shores from shipwrecks that occurred during the past few years. 
Titled ‘Nurdle Free Lanka’, the campaign aims at collecting nurdles, which lie strewn on the shorelines of Sri Lanka, using various nurdle collecting apparatus, volunteer mobilisations, and shoreline surveying. The campaign also involves coastal communities in the long-term mitigation efforts. Speaking to the Daily Mirror, Muditha Katuwawala from The Pearl Protectors said: “This was our second phase of the campaign, where during the initial phase, we saw the MV-Xpress Pearl with billions of pellets which were spilt onto our ocean. To achieve the goal of removing these nurdles, the ‘Nurdle Free Lanka’ volunteer campaign was initiated.” 
“During the clean-up, we were able to clean 400m of the beach and remove about 24 kilograms of nurdles. 34 volunteers participated in the removal, which lasted two hours,” he said.
Issuing a statement, the organisation said: “Due to the MSC ELSA 3 ship sinking off the coast of Kerala this year, nurdles have yet again spilt onto the shorelines of Sri Lanka. Four years after the MV X-Press Pearl disaster, we are yet again mobilising volunteers to clean up our shorelines from plastic pellets that harm our marine and coastal environment.”
The organisation further noted that it had initiated this volunteer campaign to eradicate the plastic pellets that were polluting the shorelines and the marine environment of Sri Lanka. 
Katuwawala said that their organisation expected to engage in more clean-up campaigns based on the survey results of where the most number of nurdles are located.