‘It’s An Environmental Disaster’
Cleaning up nurdle spills on beaches is a huge challenge, involving lots of manpower to collect the pellets: a similarly-sized nurdle spill in 2012 in Hong Kong required 7,000 volunteers to clean up those beaches. Since Sri Lanka is in a strict nationwide lockdown as the country battles a third wave of covid-19, environmental groups said they haven’t been able to muster enough volunteers to kick off cleanup efforts.
“It’s an environmental disaster,” Sri Lankan marine biologist Asha de Vos told the Washington Post. The plastic pellets “will be in our beaches for a long time to come.”
