Pour yourself a bowl.
Plastic is now an ingredient in your dinner. It is made of toxic chemicals which do not biodegrade even when they are broken into single molecules. Why would you put it in food?
These are nurdles.
What is a nurdle?
When plastic manufacturing plants make virgin plastic, they form nurdles: Small plastic pellets about the size of lentils. They are used in molds to form the plastic products we use, from wrappers on packaged foods to toys.
More than 250 quadrillion will be made this year: More than 60 billion tons of United States nurdles. One pound of plastic equals 25,000 nurdles.
How do they get away?
Since nurdles are so small, they frequently slip through cracks in doors of trucks which haul them and the actual molds which make them into usable products.
Plastics factories have fences around which nurdles gather by the thousands like snow drifts, wasted product influencing both price and the environment.
Harbors and storm drains have millions swirling in the water. When loaded into containers for shipping, nurdles fly through the air like dust devils and settle on the surface of the water.
Nurdles represent ten per cent of all plastic debris in the oceans. The United Nations (UN) states 13,000 nurdles are floating in every square mile of the ocean.
Can nurdles be harmful?
Absolutely. Nurdles absorb persistent organic pollutants (POPs), like DDT and PCBs, because plastic naturally absorbs oils. Chemicals which are no longer in widespread use are still available (persistent) in the environment.
When nurdles reach water, freshwater streams or the ocean, they absorb chemicals from the water.
Absorbing poison from the water sounds like a good thing, but it is not. Now, the nurdle is a concentrated poison pellet.
What are they hurting?
Nurdles are not sand.
Birds.
Birds think nurdles look like food. Birds eat dirt and sand to help them digest food. Nurdles mix with soil and sand, where they appear to be large grains or seeds.
Since plastic is indigestable, the pellets linger in the bird’s digestive tract. Nurdles do not function in the way sand does in a bird’s gullet, effectively keeping the bird from digesting its food.
As they remain in the gullet, any poison absorbed by the nurdles is passed to the bird. Nurdles are an equal-opportunity killer: Starvation or poisoning.
Baby Fish Eat Them
Fish.
Small fish face bigger danger from nurdles than only poison. Nurdles look like fish eggs, a primary food source.
Because the pellets do not break down in the stomach, small fish develop digestive blockages from which they can starve or die of constipation. Tiny species, like shrimp, can die from ingesting a single nurdle.
Larger fish fare no better with nurdles. When they eat smaller fish who have eaten nurdles, they face the poison leached into the meat and the indigestable nurdle itself. Accumulated nurdles block big digestive tracts as well.
Picking recyclables from the Philippine gyre.
Water supply.
Waste water treatment plants and sewerage systems have no viable method to remove nurdles from water.
Since nurdles travel through the process unscathed, they, in treated water, are then released into the wild.
Greenpeace has found concentrations of nurdles in the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, Bay of Bengal, Pacific Ocean (including the gyre and off the Phillippine coast) and Atlantic Ocean.
Orange County, California discovered in 2001, 98% of their beach debris was nurdles.
Beach Debris
Humans.
Small animals ingest nurdles, but humans would not fill a cereal bowl with them. Humans would enjoy a king salmon steak. Why not have a healthy tuna salad?
Large fish which populate human food stores are feeding on the small fish who do not know the difference between a man-made nurdle and a fish egg.
How do we keep from killing the marine wildlife?
Legislation.
California passed legislation requiring manufacturers, handlers and transporters to contain nurdles. The Ocean Protection Council specifically calls for zero discharge of nurdles into the environment.
Reduced consumption.
Sea turtle eating a plastic bag.
Choose to use less plastic. Humans each throw away 185 pounds of plastic per year. Curb consumption by any of these methods:
- Stop buying bottled water. Use a filter pitcher and a refillable bottle at home.
- Use fabric shopping bags.
- Refill plastic bottles of fabric softener and water.
- Recycle all HDPE and PET plastic bottles (milk, soda, water, detergent and shampoo bottles).
- Buy recycled plastic toys.
- Use glass. Glass is 100% recyclable.
- Use a bamboo or recycled toothbrush.
- Stop using bead exfoliating products. The beads are plastic and too small to be filtered out during reclamation.
- Stop chewing gum… waste is 100% plastic.
Correct disposal.
Do not pass by a discarded piece of plastic, regardless of location. All plastics which are not left in the environment can be properly disposed.
Keeping nurdles out of the environment is the only way to protect marine wildlife we use as food.
Have you ever seen nurdles on the beach? Did you know what they were? Can you agree to use fewer shopping bags and recycle plastic? What one plastic product can you cut out of your life altogether?
prenin
/ February 10, 2012I recycle as much as I can, but I still have to throw away PET containers because the recycling people don’t currently process food packaging, although my frozen food comes in recycled card packaging.
This mess could have been fixed decades ago, but it was too easy to ignore coming threats from our disposable lifestyle.
Fibres from synthetic clothing is getting into the food chain and are being incorporated in cells because thousands of them are washed out of our clothes every time we do the laundry and get into the food chain.
Now the crap is hitting the fan, wildlife and people are dying and NOW they decide to panic…
I pity our grandchildren…
Love and hugs!
Prenin.
Red
/ February 10, 2012My late husband lived where if your recycling could be seen through the garbage bag, you would be fined for failing to recycle. When we married, he decided I must be a Nazi because everything in our house was recycled. When it is time to take the refuse, the recyclables out number the trash nearly three to one. This is a very old message for me. I have been singing (off-key) this song for a very long time.
{HUGZ}
Red.
prenin
/ February 10, 2012Yes hun – and how long before the off-key tune becomes a funeral dirge???
Love and hugs!
Prenin.
Red
/ February 10, 2012Unfortunately, it has been before. You know I write a lot of consequences, especially the things we do which we assume have no consequences (truly there is no such thing). This is just another verse in the litany.
I am glad you used the term disposable lifestyle. I adopted that phrase in the ’80s, and it has become a defining factor of three generations. I am doing everything in my power to raise my portion of the current three generations with more respect for not only the planet, but for those who will follow them. Glad to say, when my grandchildren began coming along, they help send home Nana’s message.
{HUGZ}
Red.
Christy
/ February 10, 2012These photos were hard to look at, I really don’t like the idea of anyone being hurt. Especially by man-made products like the nurdles. I’m so glad you wrote this post and hope it encourages people to do their part by using cloth shopping bags and the other points you describe. So sad.
Red
/ February 10, 2012Since I first learned of the gyres, I have been really passionate about ocean health. A inordinately large portion of my diet is seafood, so for me it hits really close to home. For me, the passing of litter necessarily includes looking for broken bits of plastic things. As you could see by the pelican carcass, birds will eat nearly anything.
El Guapo
/ February 10, 2012Never heard of the gyres.
As far as the comments above, yeah, disposable lifestyle pretty much sums it up.
Especially with more complex (and toxic) devices, like cellphones (and their batteries) becoming disposable.
If profits keep over-riding sanity, pretty soon we’ll all be disposable.
Red
/ February 10, 2012The Pacific gyre is still currently the biggest, but the one in the Indian Ocean is catching up rapidly. I decided to save some of the photographs of the trashed beaches for a later post on gyres and the nasty consequences.
Batteries have been toxic since day one. Everyone is all aflutter over cell and car batteries (especially the fuel cells from eco-cars) now, but the fact regular alkaline batteries are still toxic after 50 years seems to go unnoticed. Any idea how many of them Duracell sold last year?
I will tackle e-waste before I am through here because it is on the rise as we stop worrying about some of the leftovers from our parents’ landfills.
prenin
/ February 10, 2012I use rechargeable batteries and Duracell batteries when they run low and need recharging.
Once the Alkaline batteries are used up I take them and my low energy bulbs to the waste recycling area for safe disposal about once per year.
Modern low energy bulbs contain Mercury so must be disposed of carefully…
Love and hugs!
Prenin.
Red
/ February 10, 2012Yes, the compact bulbs are coated with the same mercury substance in the tube fluorescent bulbs. I wish the packages had better labelling, as many people toss them the way they do incandescent bulbs.
I was completely sickened when a maintenance man for the local elementary school was smashing the tube lights in the dumpster. His reasoning was he did not want the children to play with them like light sabers. I was mortified as the dust rose through the air. Some people are so uninformed.
Good on you,
{HUGZ}
Red.
muddledmom
/ February 10, 2012Excellent post. I teach my kids as much as I can about this and I practice what I preach. It’s scary to think of what we unknowingly put in our bodies just from the containers our food is in. We do use cloth shopping bags and I’ve replaced most of my plastic food storage containers with glass and water bottles with aluminum. I have never heard of hurdles, but now I’ll be on the lookout. Thanks.
Red
/ February 10, 2012While their effects are seen most on the coasts (where the shipping lanes terminate), nurdles can be found nearly everywhere. They travel millions of miles over the road to factories in the interior of all countries which produce plastic products. Since they blend in with gravel rather easily, many can be found along the roadside. Clean up is a nightmare, but fortunately is happening worldwide.
Cutting plastic consumption is the best solution. Thank you for sharing the message.
raymond alexander kukkee
/ February 10, 2012Seeing the pictures of the gyres turned my stomach. The oceans are being used as garbage dumps and cesspools. Humanity has polluted so much and continues to do so–endlessly. When will we mature enough to start cleaning up? Apparently that is not on the schedule. Our disposable lives will be choked off with disposable garbage. Why are the gyres not harvested en masse with the plastic compressed in to useable building blocks?
We recycle everything, use cloth shopping bags, as little plastic as possible and use rechargeable batteries. It is not enough. We have to learn not to consume and not to package unnecessarily. When will manufacturers be REQUIRED to recycle everything they produce?
Great post, Red–I do hope humanity sits up and takes notice. Noticing nurdles would be a great start! ~R
Red
/ February 10, 2012Ray, the manufacturers are not the biggest part of the problem. The end-users are the problem. They do not care what their impact really is. The manufacturers are reducing packaging in an effort to maximize profit, but still are bound by food regulations as to sanitation. The fact is, many people are required to recycle, and they merely ignore the mandate. There is no enforcement beyond an occasional fine, as jurisdictions are not funded well enough to make specific enforcement entities.
This is the kind of message which needs the graphic photographs to get through to some people. Clean up is not profitable. No one wants to foot the bill.
ansuyo
/ February 10, 2012yikes! God forgive us for our thoughtlessness. I recycle everything I can, an my recycling nazi makes sure I do. what will be the long term consequences for our need for throw away things?
Red
/ February 10, 2012It is not just the throwing away. It is the need for individual things. Single serving containers are one of the largest pollutants because of the massive amount of packaging. I buy specifically for less packaging.
Marc Phillippe Babineau
/ February 10, 2012As compared to that huge floating pile of plastics and other debris floating in the ocean that is bigger than Texas, these “nurdles” are awefully scary! As if the animal kingdom hasn’t got it bad enough as is through over consumption, they have to deal with the pollution of their habitats. Imagine if some huge fish were to poop in our homes ten times a day…
Red
/ February 10, 2012First off, EWW. There are something like 7B nurdles in the Pacific gyre. Really scary when you consider it is solid enough for birds to nest on it.
Sue Dreamwalker
/ February 11, 2012An excellent post on an excellent Topic Red, one in which is close to my own heart.. We cannot see how we are polluting our environment with every plastic wrapper, and bottle that finds its way into our rivers and oceans.. Thats not mentioning all the other poisons out there..
We have become a throw-away society and we are literally choking the life out of our Planet Earth ..
~many thanks for dropping in Red… have a great weekend 🙂 Sue
Red
/ February 11, 2012Thank you, Sue. This has always been close to my heart. I am a water baby…part mermaid. A good portion of me doing my part is motivating others to do their part. Thank you for stopping by today, Dreamwalker. Red.
Charlie
/ February 11, 2012Hey, Nigel…good job on this “nurdle” thing. It is truly a shame how negligent our manufacturers (and even society, in general, in many ways) have become about some of this kind of thing. Indeed, we now know that our oceans are essentially polluted with a variety of things, including mercury and many other chemicals, and stuff like these nurdles, which take ‘forever’ to break down, and which cause death and destruction for years. Will we never learn? Will our greed for profits be our undoing as a human race? Is there no way to better control such things?
Hmmm…scary, in some ways…but I do know that “Mother Nature” is in control…she’s managed to deal with many traumatic things for billions of years before, so my guess is that she’ll continue that, until it’s time for our planet to be swallowed up by our sun. The difficult part might be that she might have to stop some of the human practices; which might mean she’ll have to basically wipe out a lot of us, to ensure she’ll have a clean slate to ‘heal’ herself from our neglect and lack of care.
I’m just sayin’…
Red
/ February 11, 2012Welcome, Charlie. Interestingly, there have always been natural ways the earth revolts against what we do to it. Whether you assign a spiritual sense to it or not, the occasional wiping out of a large quantity of a species is sometimes the revolution needed to awaken a better sensibility. Red.
lorrelee1970
/ February 11, 2012Have you heard how disgusting it is to put trash in a bird, to cut open and fish like that and make up a word like nurdle? Oh wait…..I was supposed to hide the fact I sent those nasty emails.
Red, I bet you would play a mean game of Trivial Pursuit.
Red
/ February 11, 2012Yes, but I suck at the pink ones.
lorrelee1970
/ February 11, 2012I suck at that game period.