Thread by @Telegraph

⚠️ Trillions of plastic pellets (a.k.a nurdles) are washing up on shorelines globally – causing devastating damage.

But can anything be done?

@JoeShute finds out ⬇️
telegraph.co.uk/environment/0/…

🌏Nurdles have existed since plastic was first mass-produced: the pellets form the basis for almost every plastic product on earth

telegraph.co.uk/environment/0/…

When plastics are created they are extruded into long spaghetti-like strands, which are chopped up into nurdles and packed up, often into 25kg bags, then transported around the world

🪥 Roughly speaking, it takes about 600 nurdles to make a toothbrush

🛍️ 175 for a small plastic bag

🥣 350 to make a yogurt pot

Cheap and designed to be as small as possible for ease of transportation, nurdles are susceptible to being lost at every point in the plastic supply chain:

🚛Falling off the back of trucks
🏭Falling on to factory floors
🌊Washing through drains out into the sea

Nurdles can resemble fish eggs and as such they are being mistakenly gobbled up by more than 220 marine animals.

🔴When consumed by animals, the pellets cause ‘false satiation’ whereby animals stop eating food because of the presence of nurdles in their stomachs

Beaches across the world are affected but those concentrated around industrial areas are particularly susceptible.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 North Queensferry, for example, is just a few miles from Grangemouth, Scotland’s largest container port

🌊Nurdles persist in the water for decades so it is impossible to prove exactly where they have come from – as a result, rather than manufacturers or governments taking responsibility, it is often left to small bands of volunteers to fight back against the plastic tide

🧹During beach cleans around North Queensferry, volunteers are given tweezers and a patch of ground the size of a large envelope to work on.

Even after an hour of effort, that tiny fraction of beach will not be free of the pellets
telegraph.co.uk/environment/0/…

🗣️‘It does feel like an endless struggle, and generations of children living by the beach will see this,’ says Joanna McFarlane who helps organise beach cleans with local children
telegraph.co.uk/environment/0/…

Read the full long-read here 👇
telegraph.co.uk/environment/0/…

📰You can also read the full story in our new-look @TelegraphMag, out today 👇
telegraph.co.uk/environment/0/…