-
Meet the nurdles.
-
They may be tiny, look harmless,
and sound like a bunch of cartoon characters,
-
but don't be fooled.
-
These little guys are plotting
ocean domination.
-
Nurdles are some of the planet's
most pervasive pollutants,
-
found in lakes, rivers, and oceans
across the globe.
-
The tiny factory-made pellets
form the raw material
-
for every plastic product we use.
-
And each year,
billions of pounds of nurdles
-
are produced, melted, and molded
-
into toys, bottles, buttons, bags,
pens, shoes, toothbrushes, and beads.
-
They are everywhere.
-
And they come in many guises,
multi-colored and many-shaped,
-
they range in size from
just a few millimeters to mere specks
-
that are only visible
through a microscope.
-
But their real advantage
in the quest for ocean domination
-
is their incredible endurance,
which allows them to persist
-
in an environment for generations
because their artificial makeup
-
makes them unable to biodegrade.
-
So, just as long as they don't get
into the environment,
-
we have nothing to worry about, right?
-
The problem is nurdles have a
crafty way of doing exactly this.
-
Produced in several countries
and shipped to plastic manufacturing plants
-
the world over,
nurdles often escape
-
during the production process,
carried by runoff to the coast
-
or during shipping when they're
mistakenly tipped into the waves.
-
Once in the water,
nurdles are swiftly carried by currents,
-
ultimately winding up
in huge circulating ocean systems
-
called gyres, where they convene
to plan their tactics.
-
The Earth has five gyres
that act as gathering points,
-
but the headquarters
of nurdle ocean domination
-
are in the Pacific Ocean,
where the comparative enormity of the gyre
-
and the resulting concentration
of pollution
-
is so huge that it's known as
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
-
Here, nurdles have good company.
-
This gyre draws in
all kinds of pollution,
-
but because they don't biodegrade,
plastics dominate,
-
and they come from other sources
besides nurdles, too.
-
You know those tiny beads you see
in your face wash or your toothpaste?
-
They're often made of plastic,
and after you flush them down the drain,
-
some also end up
in this giant garbage patch,
-
much to the delight of the nurdles,
building up their plastic army there.
-
And then there are the large pieces
of unrecycled plastic litter,
-
like bottles and carrier bags,
transported by runoff from land to sea.
-
Over time, these plastic chunks
turn into a kind of nurdle, too,
-
but one that's been worn down
by the elements, not made in a factory.
-
And as if they weren't
threatening enough,
-
the rough, pitted surfaces
of these microplastics,
-
the name we give to all
those collective plastic bits,
-
water-born chemicals stick,
or adhere, to them,
-
making them toxic.
-
This gathering has grown so immense
that the oceanic garbage patch can shift
-
from around the size of Texas
to something the size of the United States.
-
But while this toxic tornado
is circulating,
-
the birds, fish, filter feeders,
whales, and crustaceans around it
-
are just going about their daily business,
which means they're looking for food.
-
Unfortunately for them,
tiny bits of floating plastic
-
look a lot like fish eggs
and other enticing bits of food.
-
But once ingested,
microplastics have
-
a very different and terrible habit
of sticking around.
-
Inside an animal's stomach,
they not only damage its health
-
with a cocktail of toxins they carry
but can also lead to starvation
-
because although nurdles may be ingested,
they're never digested,
-
tricking an animal into feeling
like it's continually full
-
and leading to its eventual death.
-
When one organism consumes another,
microplastics and their toxins
-
are then passed up through the food chain.
-
And that's how, bit by bit,
nurdles accomplish their goal,
-
growing ever more pervasive
as they wipe out marine life
-
and reshape the ocean's ecosystems.
-
So, how to break this cycle?
-
The best solution would be to take
plastics out of the equation altogether.
-
That'll take a lot of time
but requires only small collective changes,
-
like more recycling,
replacing plastics with paper and glass,
-
and ditching that toothpaste
with the microbeads.
-
If we accomplish these things,
perhaps over time
-
fewer and fewer nurdles will turn up
at that giant garbage patch,
-
their army of plastics will grow weaker,
-
and they'll surrender the ocean
to its true keepers once more.