The appearance of large quantities of small white plastic balls, called pellets, on several Galician beaches in the Barbanza region has put environmental entities on alert, asking the authorities to act immediately against this tide of plastics.
The environmental association Noia Limpa denounces this Thursday that since last December 13, plastic pellets have begun to appear in bags of about 15 kilograms, scattered in the Rías Baixas region, especially in the Muros and Noia estuaries. The entity details that the loss of merchandise 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, so this material could come from a cargo ship that was transporting this material at the beginning of December.
One of those containers carried pellets, but, he added, “they don't know” how many bags it carried “or what” the others contained. All in all, to date they estimate that they have collected 52 bags, but news of these dispersed products “continues to arrive” 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 department of Coasts of Galicia, dependent on the central Government, to urgently activate a contingency plan for accidental marine pollution in the face of the appearance in recent days of tons of these microplastics. .
The Galician environmental association reproaches that, despite a first public alert about the appearance of this waste on the Galician coasts on December 15, “so far, neither the Xunta nor the Government are doing anything to control the impact of this spill.” , detect contamination points or proceed to the removal of microplastics.”
Adega warns of the consequences of not acting immediately, since the waste “could end up being ingested by marine fauna” and also “represent a new polluting aggression” on the Galician coast. At the moment, some fishermen's guilds, civil protection services and local associations such as Noia Médica, and individuals, voluntarily go to the beaches to remove these plastic remains from the coasts.
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