A turtle was found dead earlier this week at a beach in Yogyakarta with plastic waste hanging from its remains, environment activists said.
Hary Hermanto, the man who found the turtle on Congot beach on Sunday, says this is the first time a turtle is found with so much plastic waste in its stomach. He added the cause of death was unclear.
Just last month a sperm whale was found dead in a national park with almost six kilograms of plastic waste in its stomach.
Rescuers from Wakatobi National Park found the rotting carcass of the 9.5-metre sperm whale near the park in Southeast Sulawesi province, after receiving a report from environmentalists that villagers had surrounded the dead whale and were beginning to butcher the rotting carcass, park chief Heri Santoso said.
Five Asian nations — China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand — account for up to 60 percent of plastic waste leaking into oceans, said a 2015 report by the environmental campaigner Ocean Conservancy and the McKinsey Center for Business and Environment.
Indonesia, an archipelago of 260 million people, is the world’s second-largest plastic polluter after China, according to a study published in the journal Science in January.
It produces 3.2 million tons of mismanaged plastic waste a year, of which 1.29 million tons ends up in the ocean, the study said.
Source: Global News