If You Do One Thing…
A tiny charity is making waves in a bid to end plastic bead pollution
Try making waves and head out nurdle-hunting
THE sun is glinting on the sea and the sand at one of Scotland’s most beautiful beaches, showing it off in all its pristine sparkly beauty. It’s also shimmering off what look like tiny sea-polished pebbles which Alasdair Neilson has just uncovered on the tideline.
The lentil-sized beads, mostly white or transparent, but with blues and yellows mixed in, have a kind of beauty – but for Scotland’s marine life, it’s a deadly beauty.
As the project officer with the environmental charity Fidra pokes about in the sand, a couple of dog walkers stroll past. “Oh,” says one. “Are those…” she hesitates over the slightly comic word, “…nurdles?”
Once confirmed that these are indeed the plastic pellets known as nurdles, the woman and her companion come to inspect our findings. Once fully educated on what nurdles look like, they walk on.
Alasdair says, “Well, at least people don’t think we’re crazy any more when we say we’re nurdle hunting.”
In fact, rather a lot of people have now heard of the Great Nurdle Hunt, started by a group of concerned East Lothian parents who had spotted the plastic pellets on Gullane beach while walking with their children in 2013. A year later they formed Fidra, named after a local island, with the idea of collecting the tiny plastic pellets and charting their findings on an interactive map.
And the scheme has taken off with more than 1500 nurdle hunts involving dog walkers, children and beach lovers from Scotland to Australia now recorded on the charity’s website.
While nurdles are small, they are proving to be a big problem for our seas and the creatures which live in and around them. The tiny pellets are the raw form of most of
our plastic products.
Parcelled up into giant plastic bags, they are shipped in their billions around the world and melted into whatever form or shape required, from carrier bags to dolls. But spillages from ships – a small hole in one plastic bag can see millions leak out – or on factory floors, where their tiny size means they slip through filters and drains, means billions are now in our oceans and being washed up on our shores.
Unlike cotton buds or plastic cups, they’re not easy to spot. But it is their very size which is proving lethal. “Transparent nurdles look like fish eggs and they float on the surface of the water so birds and fish mistake them for food,” explains Alasdair.
Birds, including fulmars and puffins, fish, shellfish and even creatures like sea cucumbers have been found with plastic pellets in their stomachs. Not only is it horrific for the animals in question – one fulmar was found with more than 100 in its stomach – it
means they are entering the food chain, along with toxins which nurdles attract and concentrate.
Plastic bags and straws are not only easier to spot, they are simpler for the public to do something about.
“A lot of focus has been on the consumer end, the cup and cotton bud, but this is something unseen. It makes it harder to raise awareness even though it’s an issue which affects a significant proportion of the world,” says Alasdair.
Harder, but as the Great Nurdle Hunt has shown, far from impossible. Winning an RSPB Nature of Scotland Award last November and featuring on the Blue Planet website has helped the charity win worldwide attention.
“It started as a local issue and it’s just become bigger and bigger,” says Alasdair. Most nurdle hunters are individuals who spot and collect while walking their dog or strolling on the beach – “Once you get your eye in you see them all the time,” says Alasdair – although the charity does hold organised hunts, such as one in Bo’ness last year which yielded half a million nurdles in one weekend.
“We get a real mix of people nurdle hunting. You get really enthusiastic kids running around, going ‘I found one, I found one’. But when I gave a talk to the Morningside Peace and Justice group, I had 40 turn up and they were so keen. It’s an environmental issue that seems bipartisan and appeals to every age group.”
Alasdair admits there is no end in sight for clearing our beaches while thousands are still being washed up, and even those collected often end up in landfill as they are hard to recycle. But the hunt’s real advantage has been the pressure the charity has been able to bring to bear on government and industry, using the evidence of the map.
That is already bearing fruit, with more and more companies signing up to a best practice code, called Operation Clean Sweep. It’s voluntary and unaudited at the moment, something Fidra hopes to change, but it has its successes – Alasdair gives credit to a local company that makes copper wire coated in plastics. Previously a worker would cut open a bag, climb a ladder and pour plastic pellets into a machine, risking spillage. Now, a suction system means no wastage or plastic released.
There are just five members of staff at the charity’s North Berwick base. But Alasdair believes there are simple reasons for its success.
“If you have a beach you come to every day, you do get pretty passionate about it. I think you would struggle to find a more beautiful coast in the world and to see it blighted by all this plastic is pretty heart-breaking.”