Have you heard of nurdles and bio-beads? By Roy Beal, CJC You may have heard them mentioned but what are nurdles and bio-beads? Apart from being a beachcleaning nightmare, these small pellets are often mistaken for food by the varied wildlife and sea life that come across them. Up to five millimetres in diameter, these tiny pellets enter our waterways due to industrial mistakes and have a long-term effect on nature. Nurdle pollution is second only to microplastics – the tiny pieces of plastic that have broken down over time from larger items like drink bottles and other plastic waste. Nurdles - Nurdles are the building blocks of plastics. These pre-production pellets are the raw material used in the manufacture of most things plastic. Predominantly made of polyethylene or polypropylene, your plastic bags, bottles and much more besides, all started out as nurdles. I’ve said it before – plastic itself isn’t the problem – the management of plastic is. Nurdles escape into the waterways due to accidents,
errors and a general lack of care about the environment. You’ll see them on every beach and riverbank and they have been found around lakes as well. The oil and gas industry aims to increase raw material plastic production by at least 33 per cent by 2025. This presents a massive problem as an increase in production can only lead to an increase in spillage. The impact on wildlife can only get worse as spillages often make their way into our drains, which lead straight to the sea or rivers. This is how many other plastics make their way into the marine world as well. Nurdles, by their very nature, are full of toxins. Not only do they start life with chemical additives, but once in our waterways, they absorb organic pollutants in high concentrations. Marine creatures mistake them for food, cannot digest the plastic and the toxins can be absorbed into their bodies. This has implications further up the food chain. Over the years, containers with billions of beads have fallen off ships; trucks have spilt their loads and nurdle manufacturers
Pulford Publicity’s Cause of the Year have lost pellets onsite, washing them into the drainage systems. The end result is always the same; the natural world bears the brunt of our mistakes.
then attaches to the bio-beads as air is introduced into the base of the reactor. The aerated water is pushed up through the bio-beads and exits through the mesh into a drainage system that leads to a river, the sea, or is reused in other applications. What can we do to reduce the impact from spillages? Not a great deal at present. Stricter regulation is needed to help reduce the chance of environmental contamination at source, and cutting our plastic usage to reduce supply and demand in the first place will make a huge difference.
Bio-beads - Similar to nurdles in size, bio-beads are used by water treatment companies to help clean up wastewater. Classed as a biological aerated flooded filter, or BAFF, bio-beads are used in cells (also known as reactors), with each one holding around five billion beads held down by a steel mesh with three millimetre holes. The potential for disaster is obvious. As with any industry, mistakes happen and, from time to time, these beads escape and find their way into the natural world. By the time the wastewater reaches the BAFF reactor, it will have been partially treated and solids removed. ‘Biomass’ Nurdles
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Bio-beads
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