Srilanka, June 23 -- Once considered a 'miracle material' capable of solving every industrial and consumer problem of the 20th century, today, plastic has become a 'technofossil'.

It has been found in snow at the top of Mount Everest, and as deep as the Marina Trench, across every known ecosystem, ultimately bio-accumulating up the food chain to humans as well. Plastic is already become the single most pervasive and problematic geological footprint of human civilization, and the problem is still growing.

In canals and waterways across Sri Lanka too, this slow moving ecological disaster continues to worsen. It is estimated that 9 million kilograms of plastic waste enters the Indian Ocean from Sri Lankan inland waterways every year[1], r...