Shipwreck spells disaster for Sri Lanka's beaches

Brut America

Billions of plastic pellets are washing up on Sri Lanka's beaches from a sinking cargo ship.   Clean up has begun in what's being called the country's worst ecological disaster.

Transcript

00:00Our beaches are covered with these pellets, like, you know, piles of them. It is, it is crazy.

00:30There's, you know, plastic pellets being spilled that are washing up all over our beaches

00:59We estimate about four to five billion pellets might have been released to the ocean. So what

01:07the pellets are basically is the building blocks for single-use plastic. So bottles,

01:13bags and all that, etc. Scientists across the world were dedicated to understanding this problem,

01:18haven't really figured out what it means when an animal ingests these pellets and how that kind of

01:23affects them. But we do know that there's potentially some kind of impact that can happen.

01:37There have been some chemicals in some of the containers. We expect that the impact of those

01:42chemicals will be more localized because they will dissolve in the water. And so they are not

01:49going to be a long-term impact. It's more short-term localized impact. Because it's difficult

01:53to get into the ship, it's difficult right now to say how many containers may have fallen out.

01:58It's a mix of oil, chemicals, debris, wreckage and plastic pollution and then fumes all in one.

02:20It's been a massive effort. We've had support obviously from the Indian Coast Guard,

02:31for example, who deployed some vessels to come and help.

02:35We actually have deployed nearly 975

02:39Triforce personnel to collect, remove debris in these areas.

03:04The plastic pellets is actually one of the worst sorts of pollution that could happen.

03:19We've seen these incidents in Hong Kong in 2012. It needed three months with 8,000 volunteers

03:25to clean those beaches, the primary pollution that was there. So right now we don't have 8,000

03:32volunteers and we have, apart from the plastic pellets, we are seeing toxic levels also.

03:38Be realistic, it will take longer. It will take far longer.

Category

Transcript

Recommended