Scottish beach is UK’S worst for plastic ‘nurdle’ pollution
● Shore at North Queensferry had 10kg of tiny beads
A small beach on the Firth of Forth is blighted with the highest concentrations of pollution from industrial plastic beads in the UK.
Volunteers gathered nearly half a million lentil-sized plastic pellets, known as nurdles, on Ferrycraigs beach at North Queensferry during a recent nationwide survey.
Nearly 10kg of the pellets were collected at Ferrycraigs alone – the equivalent of 833 plastic bottles.
The beach is about 12 miles from the Ineos Polymers plant at Grangemouth, where nurdles are produced.
The findings come from last week’s Technicolour Nurdle Hunt organised by Scottish environmental charity Fidra, which saw teams of searchers scrutinising shorelines at 85 locations across the country.
Nurdles are the raw materials for the plastics industry and are used to make a wide range of everyday products from bin bags to bottle tops.
They are transported around Scotland by the lorryload and shipped in their billions to and from other countries.
The multi-coloured granules are easily spilled during handling and if not cleaned up can end up down drains, in rivers and eventually at sea.
Once in the marine environment, they can be mistaken for food by animals such as fish and seabirds, causing harm and potentially death.
The UK processes around three million tonnes of plastics every year, almost all in nurdle form.
Fidra estimates up to 53 billion of the man-made balls are lost each year around the UK.
The latest results highlight the prevalence of nurdles on UK beaches, with 93 per cent of hunts finding nurdles present and 43 per cent finding more than 100.
Ineos has introduced a “zero pellet loss” policy.
However, the Forth – a major hub for industry – is a known hotspot for nurdles.
Surveys over the years at Limekilns in Fife have found anywhere between 200,000 to more than two million.
Beach cleaners removed 450,000 nurdles from the shore at Kinneil nature reserve in Bo’ness last autumn, but said they had barely scratched the surface of the problem after a full day of collecting.
Other places in Scotland with particularly high nurdle deposits include Wardie Bay in Edinburgh and Gullane in East Lothian, but the problem is widespread.
Alasdair Neilson, project officer at Fidra, expressed concern at the findings and called for tougher action to combat the problem.
“It is shocking to see how prevalent nurdles are across the UK coastline,” he said.
“While parts of industry have cleaned up their act, it is clear the status quo cannot solve this issue. For nurdle pollution to be eliminated, responsibility and transparency is needed right across the supply chain.”
Douglas Chapman, MP for Dunfermline and West Fife, took part in survey at North Queensferry.
“It was an incredible effort from the volunteers to collect 450,000 nurdles from the beach that day and it shows just how big this problem is to find so many at a single location,” he said.
Nurdle hunter Tracey Williams, from Newquay Beachcombing, added: “The more you examine the strandline, the more plastic you see.”
Nurdles are part of a major marine pollution crisis, with estimates suggesting 12 million tonnes of plastic waste ends up in the ocean each year.
“It is shocking to see how prevalent nurdles are across the UK coastline. It is clear the status quo cannot solve this issue”
ALASDAIR NEILSON Fidra