Safety fails
A basic understanding of science seems to be missing in the nascent organic fertiliser industry
The main reason behind the recent incidents of explosions of containers of liquid organic fertiliser is because there is a severe dearth of quality plastic cans and bottles to store them in, local manufacturers of organic fertiliser claim. They added that unsafe transportation and storage of organic fertiliser was also contributing to the incidents.
The Sunday Times recently visited a major liquid organic fertiliser facility in the Polonnaruwa District that supplies fertiliser to the Agriculture Department to be distributed free of charge to local farmers.
The owners and managers of the factory stated that their fertiliser is made using discarded fish waste collected from various parts of the country. They are then ground down and left in large plastic barrels for about a month before being made into organic fertiliser by adding other raw materials.
They said that some 300,000 containers of organic fertiliser have already been distributed among farmers in the Polonnaruwa district and added that low quality cans and bottles had been responsible for many of the explosions that were reported. Since the liquid organic fertiliser comes from fish waste that has been left for days, they claim that even a small defect with the can or bottle is enough to cause them to explode and the contents to leak out.
Some 60 people currently work at the factory producing organic fertiliser. Factory owners say if the fertiliser was dangerous, then it is the workers who work with large barrels of that fertiliser who are liable to be injured first as those barrels too would explode.