Nurdlin'

Mid-July, a ship collision on the River Tyne caused an estimated 25 tonnes of nurdles - small, lentil-sized plastic pelletes - to spill into the river. The Tyne is tidal as far upstream as Wylam, so it didn't take long for these to wash up on the beaches of North and South Tyneside. Since then, they've spread up to Northumberland and down past Sunderland.

The Port of Tyne response focused firstly on site safety, releasing a press release confirming the incident four days later and deploying a floating containment barrier within 48 hours. Yesterday, they confirmed no further nurdles were spilling into the river. A political and legal fight is underway - on cause, liability, and reparation. Mayor Kim McGuinness is campaigning for all costs incurred to be covered. Yesterday, an Open Letter to the Port of Tyne, of which I am a signatory, was delivered to the CEO. it's been signed by celebrities, local Labour and Green Parties, and various local businesses / charities / community interest groups - many of whom have been directly involved in the volunteer action to clean up the beaches.

A volunteer-led response has been out there, daily, across all of the affected beaches and the river mouth, meticulously sweeping the sand, gathering the nurdles with minimal disruption, and bagging them for collection, weighing and disposal. This is alongside contractors and charities.

What's It Like?

Like many, I felt an overwhelming moral compulsion to do something. And the good thing about the North East of England is that feeling is widespread. We are a friendly and welcoming people who care about where we live and take pride in it. The community response has been, and still is, fantastic.

I smashed my knee on the sideboard last Friday in a classic lack of proprioception, so my efforts so far have been while injured. Some cushioned kneepads from B&Q have helped massively. I work after the evening high tide, until dark. I just pop some pirate music on and crack on with it. Once you hit the flow state, it's quite therapeutic. Obviously, we shouldn't have to do this in the first place, but we can't go back in time. It's hard to accept that we'll never get them all, and we'll be dealing with this for years to come. What we can do, now, minimises the future harm. Every gram collected is another gram that won't dissolve into microplastics, won't be mistaken as a fish egg and ingested into the food ecosystem.

The Value of Community

Margaret Thatcher might have said "There is no such thing" as society, but of course, she's wrong. People turned up. And they organised, and upskilled each other, and supported each other.

The perpetually-online keyboard warriors, the ones who encourage you to vote UKIP/Brexit/Reform, the ones who claim they're the only ones who love their country because they bash immigrants. Nowhere to be seen. My only interactions with them have been witnessing them frequenting the comments section to criticise left-wing politicians and diminish the value of those trying to help. Incidents like this expose the populist rhetoric. They aren't prepared to do the hard yards to make meaningful and lasting improvements. Their urge is to tear down and beat down. These people's love for their country is as plastic as the nurdles. And perhaps because it's white things washing up on the shores of Britain they don't seem to care as much.

I'm reminded by a poem by Hollie McNish - apologies for the Meta link, I'll quote a bit of it here:

if you really want your country back, go ahead and take it - it's not difficult. There are signs up in every street about what your town needs help with. ... and if you don't want to help with anything above just admit you do not give a shit, and shut the fuck up

What Can I Do?

Should you live locally, and you have the ability, I'd highly recommend joining the virtual community. The administrators are leading the co-ordination efforts, optimising for maximum impact. But every effort helps. There's plenty of tutorials, information and friendly people willing to help. Not everyone is able to make it down to the beach and pick stuff up - but there's also groups sewing mesh nets, gathering data on the affected coastline. There's many ways to volunteer.

But there's other things that you can do, too, if you're further afield.

Thanks to Brexit (you fuckers), we no longer necessarily have parity with EU regulation. So there is an ongoing Parliamentary Petition to align to the rather technical-sounding Plastic Pellet Loss Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2025/2365). You can write to your MP, too.

Another option is money - such as a donation to Nurdle.