Nurdles.
The word evokes visions of some sort of cute and fluffy children’s character. But the reality is much harsher.

Nurdles are plastic pellets - usually not larger than a grain of wheat. These little pellets are the convenient form in which plastic comes out of the factory, to be shipped around the world and then molded into products.

In a 2006 article, What’s a Nurdle?, Captain Charles Moore, marine biologist and founder of the Algulita Marine Research Foundation, writes,

Over 250 billion pounds of nurdles are shipped around the world to plastic processing factories every year. Nurdles are plastic resin pellets that represent the most economical way to ship large quantities of solid material, that is, in pelletized form. The pellets come in rail tank cars, and at 20-25,000 per pound, there are about a billion of them in each tanker. So many have escaped over the last half-century during the transfer from rail car to factory… Nurdles now represent about 10% of the litter counted on beaches worldwide.

 
The true danger in the distribution of nurdles is their potential to attract and absorb surrounding chemicals. These tiny pellets act like sponges, taking in polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and other toxins. They also attract chemicals that contain known carcinogens, such as persistent organic pollutants (POPs), and dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT.)

Photo from IM SNOT REAL on Flickr through Creative Commons

    Studies have shown that nurdles can absorb up to one million times the level of POPs in the surrounding water. Since they are mistaken as food by marine animals, the pellets introduce concentrated chemical potions into the feeding organism and the food chain. Nurdles float on the waves and wash up on the breach. The world’s oceans have morphed into a type of nurdle soup.
“It’s not the big trash on the beach,” says Moore,  “It’s the fact that the whole biosphere is becoming mixed with these plastic particles. What are they doing to us? We’re breathing them, the fish are eating them, they’re in our hair, they’re in our skin.”

Convenience – with a cost

Motivated by a $10,000 reward for anyone who created a man-made alternative to ivory, New York chemist John Wesley Hyatt produced the very first form of plastic in the 1850s. Every year since, more chemical additives and concoctions have been added to the substance, aiding its development towards the prevalent and unavoidable material that defines American consumption.

Undoubtedly, few can argue that plastic has provided a level of convenience in all areas of our lives; almost any material possession we can dream of is available in some form of plastic. Plastic bottles and teething rings nurse our young. The typical American tot has been entertained with Barbie dolls and plastic Legos for half a century. The viral trends of spandex pants and metallic tights are also tributes to the plastic culture.  And what college student can deny the benefits of using Tupperware to hide leftovers in the back of the fridge, away from the sneaky roomie?

At first glance, one could certainly claim the invention of plastic represents one of the greatest gifts of the modern industrial era. Yet as much as we’d like to believe we have the ability to consume, buy, demand, and discard endless commodities from the plastic god, our years of careless habits may finally be catching up with us. And the future looks deadly.
 
These are the nasty facts about our unrestrained use of plastic:

• One million plastic cups are used on U.S. airline flights every six hours.
• Americans use 2 million plastic beverage bottles every five minutes.
• We also use 60,000 plastic bags every five seconds (New Yorkers alone use more than one billion plastic bags a year, just a portion of the 3.8 million metric tons of plastic that we annually send to our landfills.)
• The United States produces the most plastic of any other nation,an unparalleled 240 pounds per person per year. This rate is equivalent to 115 million metric tons - or 347 Empire State Buildings.

“I think it is fairly clear that we need to stop wasting petroleum for single-use products, like plastic bags and water bottles that get used for a few minutes and then discarded,” says senior scientist Allen Hershkowitz of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Photo from woodleywonderworks on Flickr through Creative Commons

And plastic doesn’t biodegrade. No one really knows how long it will stay around. It may never go away.

Where does it go?

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Captain Moore has spent over a decade monitoring and studying the effects of plastic in the Pacific Ocean. “Every bit of plastic ever made still exists,” says Moore. Instead of biodegrading, Moore explains, it simply breaks down into smaller and smaller particles of plastic as it is exposed to the elements.