In the BBC series Blackadder, Edmund Blackadder once proclaimed "I am one of those people who likes to wear cotton, but I have no idea how it works". The same might be said of plastics.
"Nurdles" are what makes plastic. Tiny pre-production pellets that are the building blocks of all plastic products. These are shipped all over the world to be transformed into everyday usages, from kayaks to buttons. Sometimes the nurdles don't reach their destination, ending up as floating or sinking micropollutants.
They are eaten by marine life, killing them as a result, they attract chemical toxins and eventually degrade into nanoparticles causing further health and environmental hazards, especially for drinking water.
Recently 1,680 tonnes of nurdles were released into the ocean. It was the largest plastic spill in history with enormous environmental consequences as reported in this Guardian article https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/29/nurdles-plastic-pellets-environmental-ocean-spil
Alternatives to plastics are available for many products thankfully. Let's push the nurdle to extinction.
