Global Plastics Treaty: Nurdles Escape Scrutiny, Coastal States Bear the Cost

With 95% of pellet loss preventable, activists say the absence of binding rules on nurdles is a miss. India aligning with the petro states bloc, which is opposed to strong measures, has sparked anger from coastal states hit hardest by the spills

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The global plastics treaty negotiations in Geneva ended without agreement, and one of the most preventable yet damaging sources of microplastic pollution has been left off the table. Plastic pellets—commonly known as nurdles—are the raw feedstock of the plastics industry. Spills from their production and transport release an estimated 4,45,000 tonnes into the environment every year. Once they escape, they are almost impossible to clean up, spreading across borders and ecosystems. Yet, the revised treaty text that collapsed contained no binding language to regulate pellet loss, a gap experts say could undermine the entire ambition of the agreement.

For India, this omission is especially jarring. Just this May, the sinking of the MSC Elsa 3 off Kerala spilled millions of pellets that washed ashore from Kochi to Tamil Nadu's Dhanushkodi. Local communities organised beach clean-ups, but the scale of the contamination was overwhelming. Pellets blanketed shorelines, entered fishing grounds, and were even found in the Dhanushkodi Flamingo Sanctuary, threatening migratory bird populations. The spill echoed the catastrophic X-Press Pearl disaster of 2021 off Sri Lanka, which released over 1,600 tonnes of nurdles and remains the world's worst recorded pellet spill.

Despite these direct impacts, India did not push for pellet regulation in Geneva. Instead, it aligned with the Like-Minded Countries (LMCs), a bloc dominated by oil-producing nations such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iran, which went so far as to call for deleting the treaty article on "releases and leakages" altogether.

Their argument: plastic pellets are raw materials, not waste, and should not fall within the treaty's scope.