Green Exports

One well documented case of a Sri Lankan export industry changing its practice for environmental reasons concerns tea and the ozone layer. The story begins with an international agreement.

The United Nations Environment Programme describes the Montreal Protocol as a global agreement to protect the ozone layer by phasing out the chemicals that deplete it. It was signed in 1987 and entered into force in 1989. Sri Lanka's Ministry of Environment records that the government ratified both the Vienna Convention and the Montreal Protocol in 1989 and set up a National Ozone Unit. That unit still serves as the national focal point for the two agreements. The Sri Lanka Tea Board describes the ozone layer as a barrier to ultraviolet light from the Sun.

The Sri Lanka Tea Board explains the link to tea. Methyl bromide, a pesticide used to fumigate soil and many agricultural products, was identified as a substance that damages the ozone layer. At the time it was widely used in the Sri Lankan tea industry: on estates, in warehouses, on ships and in other places where tea was stored or moved.

Under the Protocol, the Board records, the tea industry's use of methyl bromide was reduced step by step and then ended. In 2007 Sri Lanka received the Montreal Protocol Implementers Award. Since May 2011, the Board states, all Ceylon Tea has been entitled to carry the "Ozone Friendly Pure Ceylon Tea" logo, which signals that the tea was produced without ozone-depleting substances.

The Tea Board presents this as part of a longer record. It notes that an early step by the industry was to prohibit the use of DDT, and that wooden tea chests were given up more than twenty years before the Board's account was written.

The Board also points to forests. It names the Sinharaja, which lies above the estates of the Sabaragamuwa tea district, along with the Hakgala Forest Reserve, Horton Plains and the Peak Wilderness. According to the Board, planters have long understood the importance of preserving the forest above the tea, and part of the work of running an estate goes to that task. It adds that the industry is now acting on wider concerns, among them competition for water and pollution from fertilisers, and that new legislation and industry rules have been put in place.

The Export Development Board makes related statements about other export sectors. On rubber, it says that rubber farms extending over 130,000 hectares act as man-made renewable forests, and that the country's environmental regulations apply to rubber farming, processing and manufacturing.

On coir, a natural coconut fibre, the Board notes that coir geotextiles hold soil in place and take the place of polymer fabrics such as polypropylene, polyester and nylon. It describes coir mats and carpets as fully biodegradable.

These are statements by official bodies about whole sectors. They do not describe the practice of any single producer or exporter.