Sri Lanka’s Marine Environment Protection Authority (MEPA) says more than 43 containers’ worth of plastic pellets have been collected from the country’s coastline, material that drifted ashore after the container ship MSC Elsa 3 sank off the Indian coast.
MEPA Chairman Samantha Gunasekara said the pellets are still coming ashore along the stretch running from the Jaffna islands down to Galle, and that the problem has intensified with the onset of the monsoon season.
Some 1,800 workers have been deployed to remove the pellets, with the cost met by the shipping company, NewsFirst reported.
Work has also begun on preparing the estimates Sri Lanka needs in order to claim compensation for the damage the sinking caused to its marine ecosystem. Gunasekara said the expert committee appointed for that purpose met again on Monday.
The MSC Elsa 3, a Liberian-flagged vessel, ran into trouble after a water leak on 25 May 2025 and sank about 38 nautical miles off the coast of Kerala, India. It was carrying 643 containers at the time.
The pellets — small plastic granules used as raw material in manufacturing — are difficult to clear once they wash into sand, and monsoon currents have repeatedly pushed fresh loads onto beaches more than a year after the sinking.
The recovery effort is part of a wider coastal clean-up. Last week MEPA said eight tons of plastic bottles gathered along the same Jaffna-to-Yala coastal stretch, collected alongside the Elsa 3 pellets, had been sent for recycling.
Update (July 30): MEPA has reported a significant increase in plastic debris washing ashore along the coastline over the past two days, and suspects that another container of nurdles from the wreck has burst open.
Gunasekara said the shipping company has been informed of the latest wave of nurdles and other debris reaching Sri Lanka’s coastline, NewsFirst reported. The cumulative recovery figure remains at more than 43 containers’ worth.
A fresh release of this kind is the pattern the cleanup has followed since the sinking: containers left on the seabed continue to fail one at a time, and monsoon currents carry each new load onto beaches within days. Because nurdles work their way into sand rather than sitting on top of it, each surge adds to the manual clearance workload for the roughly 1,800 workers deployed, rather than replacing it.
