Politicians bicker as plastic pellets swamp Spain’s beaches
– Dozens of volunteers used strainers to sift sand at beaches in northwestern Spain on Tuesday to collect millions of tiny plastic pellets which have washed up in recent days, endangering wildlife.
The minuscule pellets, called nurdles, began arriving on the coast of Spain’s Galicia region after six containers fell from a Liberia-registered ship on 8 December as it headed from the Spanish port of Algeciras to Rotterdam in the Netherlands. One of the containers was loaded with bags of the pellets, according to shipping giant Maersk, which owns the containers.
Sometimes called mermaids’ tears, the pellets are the building blocks for most of the world’s plastic production, from car bumpers to bottles to salad bowls.
Measuring less than five millimetres, they are not readily visible, except when they wash up in unusually huge quantities, and are notoriously hard to collect.
“We are collecting the pellets with our own tools,” said Adriana Montoto, a 35-year-old pharmacist, noting that nongovernmental groups have “organised everything”.
Sonia Iglesias Rey, a 26-yearold domestic worker who came to help at a beach in Noia, was using a bamboo basket to gather pellets floating in the water.
The Ecologistas en Accion group, one of the clean-up organisers, accused regional authorities of “inaction”.
It would have been easier to collect “entire bags from the water” right after the containers fell overboard, said Cristobal Lopez, spokesperson for the group.
Fish and birds often swallow the pellets, thinking they are food, and once ingested the granules can make their way into the diet of humans.
“Their shape and size attract many species of birds, fish and crustaceans that mistake them for fish eggs” and they can die “once their stomachs are full of plastic”, Ecologistas en Accion warned in a statement.
This rugged Atlantic coast, with hundreds of hidden coves, inlets and desolate beaches, is the heart of Europe’s shellfish industry.
In 2002, the verdant region’s coastline was devastated by a
huge spill of fuel oil from the Prestige tanker, Spain’s worst ecological disaster.
So far, the nurdle spill has most impacted beaches in the municipalities of Vigo, Pontevedra, Noia and La Coruna, but pellets have also been found in neighbouring regions of northern Spain.
“We still don’t know what the extent of the damage could be,” Environment Minister Teresa Ribera told Cadena Ser radio.
State prosecutors have opened an investigation, which has sparked a political blame game ahead of regional elections in Galicia, a stronghold of the main opposition Popular Party (PP).
Spain’s leftist government has accused the region, which has been led by the PP since 2009, of taking too long to ask for help.
“The clean-up of beaches cannot be carried out solely through the tremendous commitment of volunteers and environmental organisations,” a spokesperson for the environment ministry said.
On Tuesday, the hard-left party, Sumar, a junior partner in Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s coalition government, filed a lawsuit against the Galicia regional government alleging “inaction” against the pollution.
After initially downplaying the risk posed by the pellets, the Galicia government on Tuesday raised its pollution alert level to two, a step needed to ask for aid from the central government.
Ingesting plastic is harmful to human health, but nurdles also attract and bind chemical contaminants found in the sea to their surface, making them potentially even more toxic. –