Cape Town – Millions of tiny nurdles are washing up all along the Cape’s beaches.
Over the past two weeks, the City of Cape Town’s Environmental Management Department has detected a sudden increase in the number of nurdles washing up onto beaches around the Cape metropole.
Nurdles are very small pellets of plastic used as raw material in the manufacture of plastic products.
The City – in collaboration with stakeholders from The Beach Co-op, Shark Spotters, Two Oceans Aquarium, South African National Parks and other conservation organisations – is busy with a huge clean-up effort to remove the nurdles.
Large numbers of nurdles are also being reported on beaches across the Southern Cape.
Plastics SA is investigating the possibility that the nurdle spill is from a vessel that lost its cargo off the coast of Plettenberg Bay.
