The appearance of large quantities of small white plastic balls, called pellets, on several Galician beaches in the Barbanza region has alarmed environmentalists and called on the authorities to take immediate action against this plastic flood.
The environmental association Noia Limpa denounces this Thursday that since December 13 last year, plastic pellets in bags of about 15 kilograms have been appearing scattered in the Rías Baixas region, especially in the Muros and Noia estuaries. The company says the loss of goods from six containers was reported near Viana do Castelo in Portugal. The association points out that the bags are labeled with the name of the company Bedeko Europe, meaning that this material could have come from a cargo ship that transported this material at the beginning of December.
One of those containers contained pellets, but he added, “They don’t know” how many bags it contained “or what” the others contained. All in all, they estimate that they have collected 52 bags to date, but news of these scattered products continues to come, and bags have appeared on several beaches in the Rías Baixas.
For its part, the environmental association Adega urges the Xunta de Galicia and the coastal department of Galicia, dependent on the central government, to urgently activate an emergency plan for accidental marine pollution, given the appearance in recent days of tons of these microplastics. .
The Galician environmental association accuses that, despite a first public warning about the appearance of this waste on the Galician coasts on December 15, “neither the Xunta nor the government is taking any action to date to control the effects of this spill”, detect eliminating sites of contamination or continue to remove microplastics.”
Adega warns of the consequences if immediate action is not taken, as the waste “could end up being absorbed by marine fauna” and could also represent “a new environmentally damaging aggression” on the Galician coast. Currently, some fishing guilds, civil protection services and local associations such as Noia Médica, as well as individuals, are voluntarily going to the beaches to remove these plastic residues from the coasts.
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