Nurdles: the worst toxic waste that you've never heard of

Billions of tiny plastic pellets are fl oating in the world’s oceans – and causing as much damage as oil spills

- Karen McVeigh

When the X-Press Pearl container ship caught fire and sank in the Indian Ocean in May, Sri Lanka was terrified that the vessel’s 350 tonnes of heavy fuel oil would spill into the ocean, causing an environmental disaster for the its pristine coral reefs and fishing industry.

Classified by the UN as Sri Lanka’s “worst maritime disaster”, the biggest impact was not caused by the heavy fuel oil. Nor was it the hazardous chemicals on board, which included nitric acid, caustic soda and methanol. The most “significant” harm, according to the UN, came from the spillage of 87 containers full of lentil-sized plastic pellets: nurdles.

Since the disaster, nurdles have been washing up in their billions along hundreds of kilometres of coastline, and are expected to make landfall on beaches around the Indian Ocean from Indonesia and Malaysia to Somalia. In some places they are piled up to 2 metres deep. They have been found in the bodies of dead dolphins and the mouths of fish. About 1,680 tonnes of nurdles were released into the ocean. It is the largest plastic spill in history, according to the UN report.

Nurdles, the colloquial term for “pre-production plastic pellets”, are the little-known building block for all our plastic products. The tiny beads can be made of polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene and other plastics. Released into the environment from plastics plants or when shipped around the world as raw material to factories, they will sink or float, depending on the density of the pellets and whether they are in freshwater or saltwater.