Nearly a month after environmentalists and local authorities began calling attention to plastic nurdles washing up on Spanish beaches, the federal government has launched a formal investigation. The source of the small plastic balls used to make plastic bottles and similar food packaging has been identified as a container ship operating under charter with Maersk.
As early as December 13, environmental activists working with the Spanish environmental group Ecologista en Acción found small pieces of plastic washing up on coastlines, mainly in the Galician region. I started. Volunteers began scouring beaches to collect small pieces of plastic, raising concerns about how much there would be. It disappeared into the sea. Environmental groups say billions of nurdles could end up floating in the ocean or on land, warning of the impact on fisheries and the food chain.
An investigation determined that the source of the nurdles was a container ship that spilled six boxes overboard on Dec. 8 about 80 miles west of the Portuguese coast. Due to ocean currents, most of the plastic is found on Spain’s coasts of Galicia and parts of Asturias, but there are also reports of traces of plastic reaching the coasts of France.
Liberian flag ship Tokonao (116,000 deadweight tons) was sailing in the Bay of Biscay from Algeciras to Rotterdam. It currently operates between the Mediterranean and Northern Europe under charter to Maersk and is managed by Columbia Shipmanagement in Singapore. This ship she was built in 2003 and her carrying capacity is her 8,600 TEU.
Maersk said six of the containers spilled overboard and that none of the container cargo was officially listed as hazardous. There is no word on what else was inside the boxes, but one of them contained 1,050 bags of nurdles (less than 5 millimeters in size). Each bag reportedly contains 55 pounds of milk buds. Greenpeace estimates 22,500 nurdles per pound, meaning there could have been nearly 1.3 billion nurdles in the container. Maersk told The Associated Press that the shipowner has hired several cleanup experts to assist in efforts to remove plastic from the shore.
Volunteers try to collect balls from the beach (Photo courtesy of Ecologistas en Accion)
However, Ecologist en Accion is not satisfied with the slow response to the cleanup process. They are critical not only of the government but also of the shipping industry. The activist group announced in a statement on January 5 that it would file an environmental complaint against the ship’s owner.
The problem with nurdles is well known, and there have been calls to restrict or outlaw their shipments. Exactly a year ago, when plastic started washing up on Brittany’s beaches, France threatened legal action. Sri Lanka faced a similar problem in 2021 when the feeder ship X-Press Pearl caught fire and sank off the coast of Colombo. They are working with environmentalists to clear the beaches of nurdles, and they expect the effects to last for more than a decade.
Greenpeace, together with Ecologista en Acción, Friends of the Earth, SEO/Birdlife and WWF, called for greater cooperation between Spanish authorities in response to the current pellet spill. At the same time, organizations are using the event to draw widespread attention to the problem of microplastics in the ocean.