I heard a fabulous, but frightening talk the other day about nurdles.
Nurdles. Great word; sad story.
Nurdles are tiny bits of plastic that contaminate our oceans. They are made of HDPE, high-density polyethylene, the stuff we use for plastic bags, laundry bottles, milk containers…the list goes on and on.
What is so terrible about nurdles is that they are collecting in a giant garbage pile in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is an area thousands of kilometers wide where currents meet and our tons and tons of plastic waste resides.
So, that’s where those plastic bags end up.
What is so devastating about nurdles is how they affect marine life.
Many marine birds feed on small organisms that look just like nurdles. Instead of ingesting the small crustaceans that are necessary for their survival, birds are ingesting our plastic garbage.
If the birds aren’t choked to death by eating the nurdles, they are damaged by the plastic chemicals leaching into their bodies.
Our obsession with plastic is wreaking havoc on our oceans and killing marine life.
Put down the water bottle, put down the plastic bag; our oceans deserve better.
