Sri Lanka has been ranked as one of the world’s worst marine polluters in a study conducted by international Business Times Magazine.
In the study where a country-by-country breakdown of plastics in oceans was recorded, Sri Lanka has been ranked as No 5, along with a number of other Asian countries.
China has been named as the number one offender, followed by Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam.
Sri Lanka has been ranked fifth in the chart with a waste generation rate of 5.1 kg per person per day. The study records that 0.299 kg of plastic is mismanaged by a person every day while the country generates 5,163,689 kilograms of plastic waste per day. The total waste generation is 74,297,687 kilograms per day.
Study highlights that plastic kills thousands of seabirds, sea turtles and marine mammals each year. Discarded bottles and packaging containers can also leak chemicals such as bisphenol A, which could be consumed by fish and eventually cause health problems for consumers.
