So small, yet so deadly. Investors force plastic industry to reveal pollution
By Marc Fawcett-Atkinson | 5/5/21 | News, Food Insider
Investors are forcing the world’s biggest plastic manufacturers to reveal how many harmful plastic pellets they are leaking into rivers, lakes and oceans worldwide.
Factories, trains, ships and trucks spill about 10 trillion of the lentil-sized pellets, or nurdles, used to make all plastic products, into the environment each year — enough to make roughly 15 million plastic bottles. Once in aquatic environments, pellets absorb toxins in the water, becoming poisonous magnets for birds, fish and other animals.
Pellet contamination is widespread around B.C.’s Lower Mainland, according to a 2019 study by University of Victoria researchers and the Surfrider Foundation. They’re also a major problem in the Great Lakes and other regions with high concentrations of plastic manufacturing or transportation infrastructure.
International chemical company DuPont last week announced it will start publicly reporting how many pellets it loses each year, joining several other major plastic producers. The move comes after most shareholders voted for the disclosure against company wishes — a decision that can help expose the plastics industry’s outsized role in the plastic pollution crisis.
“The more activities — no matter what they are — that remind people plastic comes from industry and literally nowhere else, the better,” said Max Liboiron, a professor of geography at Memorial University who studies plastic pollution. “(Plastics) only come from one place, and anything we can do to (push accountability) back up the pipe is valuable.”