Mannar’s ‘plastic beaches’ a sinister sign of transboundary pollution

By Tharushi Weerasinghe  

With the southwest monsoon in full swing, the shores of Mannar are once again buried under waves of transboundary plastic pollution, this year, locals say, worse than ever.

“When we go out to sea, the southern coast leading to Adam’s Bridge is covered,” said Selvaratnam Dilaxan, a social and environmental activist from Mannar. “There’s plastic dust in the air, too, brought by the winds. We usually get a lot of it, but this time it is intense.” Locals speculated that the trash is coming in from India, though there is no official data or research at the moment to confirm this. “But everything is ending up here, and it is having extremely bad impacts on our ecosystems.” Mr. Dilaxan also noted that, in the absence of official studies, the impact of plastic pollution at this scale on groundwater and fish — the community’s primary sources of income and sustenance — remains unknown, though it is likely causing severe, yet undiscovered, health consequences.

Read more at today's Sunday Times here: