Spain politicians bicker as plastic ‘nurdle’ spill swamps beaches

Tiny ‘nurdles’, the building blocks for most plastic products, are often ingested by fish and birds – Copyright GETTY IMAGES/AFP Kent Nishimura

Brais Lorenzo with Marie Giffard in Madrid

Dozens of volunteers used strainers to sift sand at beaches in northwestern Spain on Tuesday to collect millions of tiny plastic pellets that have washed up in recent days, endangering wildlife.

The minuscule pellets, called nurdles, began arriving on the coast of Spain’s Galicia region after six containers fell from a Liberia-registered ship on December 8 as it headed from the Spanish port of Algeciras to Rotterdam in the Netherlands.

One of the containers was loaded with bags full of the pellets, according to shipping giant Maersk which owns the containers.

Sometimes called Mermaids’ Tears, the pellets are the building blocks for most of the world’s plastic production, from car bumpers to bottles to salad bowls.

Measuring less than five millimetres (0.2 inches) in size, they are not always readily visible except when they wash up in unusually huge quantities, as has been the case along the northwestern Spanish coast, and are notoriously hard to collect.

“We are collecting the pellets with our own tools,” said Adriana Montoto, a 35-year-old pharmacist, noting that instead of the authorities, it has been non-governmental groups that have “organised everything”.

Sonia Iglesias Rey, a 26-year-old domestic worker who came to help at a beach in the municipality of Noia, was using a bamboo basket to gather the pellets floating in the water.

The Ecologistas en Accion group, one of the cleanup organisers, accused regional authorities of “inaction”.

It would have been easier to collect “entire bags from the water” right after the containers fell overboard, said Cristobal Lopez, a spokesman for the group.

– Spreading damage –

Fish and birds often swallow the pellets thinking they are food, and once ingested the granules can make their way into the diet of humans.

“Their shape and size attract many species of birds, fish and crustaceans that mistake them for fish eggs” and can die “once their stomachs are full of plastic”, Ecologistas en Accion warned in a statement.

Galicia’s rugged Atlantic coast, with hundreds of hidden coves, inlets and desolate beaches, is the heart of Europe’s shellfish industry.

In 2002, the verdant region’s coastline was devastated by a huge spill of fuel oil from the Prestige tanker, Spain’s worst ecological disaster.

So far the nurdle spill has most impacted beaches in the municipalities of Vigo, Pontevedra, Noia and La Coruna, but the pellets have also been found in neighbouring regions of northern Spain.

“We still don’t know what the extent of the damage could be,” Environment Minister Teresa Ribera told Cadena Ser radio on Tuesday.

Spain’s state prosecutors have opened an investigation into how the pellets arrived, which has sparked a political blame game ahead of regional elections next month in Galicia, a stronghold of the main opposition conservative Popular Party (PP).

– Blame game –

Spain’s leftist government has accused the region, which has been led by the PP since 2009, of taking too long to ask it for help.

“The clean-up of beaches cannot be carried out solely through the tremendous commitment of volunteers and environmental organisations,” a spokesman for the environment ministry told AFP.

On Tuesday, the hard-left party Sumar, a junior partner in Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s coalition government, filed a lawsuit against the Galicia regional government alleging “inaction” against the pollution.

After initially downplaying the risk posed by the pellets, the Galicia government on Tuesday raised its pollution alert level to two, a step needed to ask for aid from the central government.

Alberto Nunez Feijoo, the PP’s national leader who headed the regional government of Galicia between 2009 and 2022, said “what is toxic” is the “political use” leftist leaders are making of the hazard.

Ingesting plastic is harmful for human health, but nurdles also attract and bind chemical contaminants found in the sea to their surface, making them potentially even more toxic.