- In addition to air and water pollution, India can now add one more category to its pollution worries: beach pollution.
- And here, tourism and fishing are the biggest culprits, contributing most of the plastic litter on beaches, according to a study by the National Centre of Coastal Research (NCCR).
- The NCCR conducted a qualitative analysis of the litter on six different beaches on the eastern and western coasts.
- It found that plastic litter from tourism alone accounted for 40%-96% of all beach litter.
- At Chennai’s Elliot’s Beach, for instance, plastics left by tourists accounted for 40% of all the litter, while at Gopalpur in Odisha, it was as high as 96%.
- As for the other four beaches, plastics formed 66% of the overall litter on Fort Kochi Beach, 60% at Karnataka’s Karwar beach, 87% at Visakhapatnam’s R.K. Beach, and 81% at Andaman Island’s Rangachang beach.
- After tourism, fishing was the next biggest source of litter.
- While fishing nets were a major contributor, the processing of fish on the beach also produced a lot of litter.
- Tourists bring a wave of trash to beaches
- At Fort Kochi, fishing litter accounted for 22% of the total, followed by Elliot’s Beach at 15%, and Karwar beach at 10%
- Also, the proportion of biomedical litter was high in urban areas, such as Elliot’s Beach and Fort Kochi Beach.
- Other than the plastic litter dropped by tourists, similar waste from creeks and inlets made its way into the sea in the monsoon.
