Plastic pellet pollution

[11] These nurdles spill during transportation and production and due to inadequate precautions and regulations, millions of pellets of plastic end up in nearby waterways and eventually the ocean.

[16] Nurdles have frequently been found in the digestive tracts of various marine creatures, causing physiological damage by leaching plasticizers such as phthalates.

For example, concentrations of PCBs and DDE on nurdles collected from Japanese coastal waters were found to be up to 1 million times higher than the levels detected in surrounding seawater.

[22] The Great Nurdle Hunt, which occurred June 2–5, 2017, across the United Kingdom drew attention to the issue of plastic pellet pollution.

A program started by Fidra, a Scottish environmental charity, sourced information on nurdles from citizens across the region using shared photos to better understand the makeup of pollution across beaches in the UK.

[24] A semi-truck crash led to the release of bright blue colored nurdles into Pocono Creek and the waterways of the Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania.

[25] On February 23, 2020, the Trans Carrier ship, traveling from Rotterdam (Netherlands) to Stavanger (Norway), encountered severe weather conditions off the Danish coast.

[28] On 2 June 2021 the cargo ship X-Press Pearl sank off the coast of Sri Lanka, spilling chemicals and microplastic nurdles and causing the worst environmental disaster in the country's history.

[29] In January 2023, the French government announced it will be taking legal action against "persons unknown" in response to extensive plastic pellet pollution along the coast of Brittany that is thought to have originated from shipping containers lost in the Atlantic Ocean.

[4] Since December 2023, the coast of Galicia is facing an environmental crisis due to millions of tiny white plastic balls from the Liberian-flagged ship Toconao, which lost six containers off Viana do Castelo in Portugal.

[31] On April 11, 2013, in order to create awareness, artist Maria Cristina Finucci founded The Garbage Patch State at UNESCO[40] in Paris in front of Director General Irina Bokova.