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.
Clean up has begun in what's being called the country's worst ecological disaster.
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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.