You’d be surprised to know that plastic products come from minuscule tubules called nurdles that melt down to make plastic products of any color, thickness, texture or shape. This almost sounds like a metaphor in a graduation speech: Every child is a tiny human that can join with other nerd(les) in a melting pot like a college to mold a group or society in a certain way.
I learned about nurdles from Alan Weisman’s book The World Without Us. These nurdles can find their tiny way to the world’s oceans where a specific phenomenon occurs. Bioaccumulation means a substance’s potency builds up as it moves up the food chain. For example, a population of krill shrimp each eat one nurdle, a small fish eats fifteen krill, a bigger fish eats ten of the smaller fish, and the list goes on.
As the food chain continues, nurdles begin to amass with each consumer. This poses a predicament higher in the food chain. The same process occurs with elements like mercury, (hence, the warnings about a human’s consuming too many fish at the top of the food chain—mercury bioaccumulates in species like tuna). Marine species mistake the nurdles for food, and who wouldn’t? Nurdles are small, colorful and abundant.
Unfortunately, nurdles are not the only small, plastic items settling into the sea. According to industry, exfoliants are exactly where they should be—in the ocean. The industry designs them small enough to slip down the drain with the mini stream of the sink water that eventually turns into the global currents. These beads flow right off your face when you rinse the facial wash or shampoo you’ve been using. Some companies use biodegradable beads as exfoliants, while many others use plastic. These plastic grains bioaccumulate the exact same way nurdles do, but are actually intended to come to rest with the even smaller H20 molecules that make up seventy percent of the earth. (Notice, I wrote “the earth,” not “our earth,” but that’s another article.)
I have written before about how consumers have the power to change an industry based on our economic decisions in what we purchase. Now, I suggest you buy only products with natural exfoliants like coconut shell pieces. Let’s make like nurdles and come together to end the production of plastic exfoliants. We may not be able to solve the entire plastic problem all at once, but this is one small, tangible problem we can solve.
-Dixon is a sophomore Environmental Fellow from Evansville, Indiana.