Great question and glad you asked! I discovered the term “nurdle” when I was reading Plastic Soup: An Atlas of Ocean Pollution. Nurdles or “plastic pellets” are the pure form of plastic before they are turned into an object. Think of them as the “building blocks” of the plastic industry, you need them to make the bottles, cups, utensils, really any plastic object. The chemical make up can be polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene, polyvinyl chloride, and the size is quite small (think the size of a lentil bean). For being so small, they are a HUGE pollution problem. Nurdles can enter the environment through factory or in transit spills. They are mistaken for food and ingested by many fish and marine animals, a deadly mix up. Once they are in the water, sand, soil, they are incredibly hard to separate. As horrible as these little plastic nightmares are, I will admit a strange excitement when I find one on the beach. Its like finding sea glass, but instead of a sculpted frosted glass, the treasure is a perfect smooth circle of plastic.
My nurdle hunt was inspired after a home office day when I found myself at Huk, a small beach close to Oslo. I was picking up debris when I found one plastic pellet, then another, and another. Realizing my finds couldn’t be a coincidence, I plopped down on the beach and started to sift through the sand with a stick. Sure enough more and more nurdles revealed themselves. Their presence was really hard to ignore. I emailed my advisor Hans Peter about my discovery and asking his thoughts on why so many in that location. His response was very informative, turns out there was a big nurdle spill from a container ship in 2020. After finding so many of them on my first trip, I decided to return the next day. It didn’t take long to find more hiding in the sand.
299 Nurdles later….
Want to know more? Here’s a few resources to get you started down the nurdle rabbit hole: