Clean-up teams are in a race against time to remove billions of plastic pellets that are building up on England’s east coast before they are washed back out to sea.
The pellets – called nurdles – were spilled from containers on board a ship that collided with a tanker off the coast of Grimsby a little over a week ago.
Strong winds have blown the plastic pieces – about the size of a lentil – 50 miles south and they’re now being scattered on the nature-critical beaches of Norfolk and Lincolnshire.
We walked for a mile along the coast near the village of Titchwell in north Norfolk. What should be pristine sand now has a line of pellets left behind by the tide.
It takes a while to see them against the natural debris of seaweed and shells.
But once you get your eye in, the sheer number brings home the scale of the environmental disaster.
Some are small semi-translucent balls, the “raw” plastic that is later moulded into everyday items.
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Others have been charred by the intense fire that followed the collision.
But we also found clumps of blackened pellets that had melted together in the heat.
One was two metres across, the size of a family dining table.
The top looked like molten lava. But underneath you could see the hundreds of thousands of pellets that made up its rock-hard bulk.
It gave off a pungent smell, similar to tar or asphalt used on a newly-laid road.
Jim Scott, the operations manager at Titchwell Marsh RSPB reserve on the Norfolk coast, said birds are likely to mistake the pellets for fish eggs.
“The fear there is that birds are coming along and potentially eating those,” he told Sky News.
“There’s also the fact that as time goes on, those nurdles will degrade into smaller bits and they’ll get into the food chain via plankton and then work their way up.
“And indeed we are part of food chain as well, so it’s absolutely an issue for us.”
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The public is being warned not to touch the pellets in case they are covered in toxic chemicals.
But West Norfolk Borough Council has organised professional clean up teams to remove as much plastic as possible before higher spring tides, expected in the next few days.
Large clumps are being removed by all-terrain vehicles, while vacuums and sieves are being used to clear up individual pellets.
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But the coastline is so long – and the tidal salt marshes behind the beaches so inaccessible – that many will inevitably be left behind.
Plastic pellets can now be found on shorelines around the world.
According to the environmental charity Fidra almost 450,000 tonnes are spilled from the plastic supply chain every year. That’s enough to make 29 billion plastic bottles.
Megan Kirton, senior project officer at Fidra, said the industry must do more to stop spills – such as keeping containers of pellets below deck so they can’t be released into the sea.
“It’s not just in huge spills that these nurdles are getting into the environment,” she said.
“It’s the everyday handling of nurdles because the plastic supply chain is so big and because they travel so many miles, so they’re leaking out of every step.
“This really needs to be better regulated to prevent that.”
