‘Nurdles’ – the plastic menace polluting our coastline and sealife

SCOTS campaigners have warned of a new kind of microplastic poisoning the sea, after a study found tiny plastic pellets now cover the majority of Britain’s coastline. Following the scandals over microbeads and fibres from wet wipes, the ‘nurdle’ is the latest form of plastic to raise alarm.

The survey comes in the wake of the Scottish Daily Mail’s Banish the Bottles campaign, which aims to rid Scotland of the scourge of littered plastic bottles and cans by introducing a deposit scheme.

Nurdles are pellets around 5mm in diameter which are melted together to make almost every plastic product, from mobile phone covers to children’s toys.

Hard to spot on the British coast, they have become magnets for seabirds, which mistake them for small crustaceans, and smaller fish, which threaten to introduce them into the human food chain.

A search for the pellets, taking in 279 shorelines, has found them on almost three-quarters of beaches from Shetland to the Scilly Isles.

Volunteers say they discovered an incredible 127,500 nurdles on just one 110-yard stretch of beach at Widemouth Bay in Cornwall.

Scottish charity Fidra estimates that up to 53billion pellets are lost in the UK every year. They escape easily from the containers that transport them and are blown and washed into drains and waterways.

Madeleine Berg of Fidra, based in North Berwick, East Lothian, said: ‘Simple precautionary measures can help prevent spillages and ensure nurdles don’t end up in our environment.

‘We are asking the UK Government to ensure best practice is in place along the full plastic supply chain and that any further nurdle pollution is stopped.’

Microbeads, used in make-up and deodorants, are set to be banned in the UK following a Daily Mail campaign.

Companies have promised clearer instructions not to flush wet wipes and have replaced plastic cotton wool bud stems with paper following public pressure over microplastics.

But nurdles are remarkably similar to these microplastics, attracting pollutants which build up on their surfaces and make them toxic for marine life.

The raw plastic pellets, made into everything from containers to plastic bags, are spilled and mishandled, ending up in drains and passing easily through sewage systems designed to trap larger objects.

They have been found in the stomachs of fulmars, puffins and gulls, which mistake them for fish eggs or shellfish, risking starvation as their bellies fill with plastic, convincing them they are full.

Emma Cunningham, senior pollution campaigns officer at the Marine Conservation Society, said: ‘Scientists are becoming increasingly concerned about their effect on our delicate marine ecosystem, so it’s vital people understand what they are.’