• Consumers especially from the low income and education strata do not dispose of the bottles safely but dump them in the public, in waterways, and even in cultivation fields

By Kurulu Koojana Kariyakarawana

Environment Minister Mahinda Amaraweera yesterday said that he would take every possible action to ban the liquor quarter bottle, which is both hazardous to personal health as well as to the environment. Making his observations on the running controversial topic of prohibiting the production of liquor quarter bottles permanently, Minister Amaraweera said the damage done to the environment owing to the haphazard disposal of these bottles was alarmingly high.

The minister’s views come in the wake of the serious concerns made by Chairman of National Authority on Tobacco and Alcohol (NATA) Dr. Samadi Rajapaksa last week urging the authorities to completely ban the quarter bottle quoting the same reasons.

Minister Amaraweera said there were alarming figures collected by the Ministry of Environment recently that in the year 2019 alone alcohol consumers in Sri Lanka had used over 105 million such quarter bottles and nearly 95% of the empty bottles had not been properly disposed of. Studies undertaken by the environmental authorities have shown that low-income earners in society resort to the habit of finishing quarter bottles of hard liquor with a high volume of alcohol in one go for quick intoxication.

These consumers especially from the low income and education strata do not dispose of the bottles safely but dump them in the public, in waterways, and even in cultivation fields causing severe pollution and issues to the farmer communities.

“I have already had several rounds of talks with the relevant authorities regarding this issue but nobody has come up with a positive solution. Therefore, I would take all the action possible in my capacity to ban these pocket-size hard liquor bottles from the market,” Amaraweera said.