THOUSANDS of plastic nurdles have started washing up on beaches around Jersey.
The tiny pellets have been spotted scattered along the sand in St Ouen’s Bay, Grève d’Azette and Long Beach in recent days.
Nurdles – formally known as pre-production plastic pellets – are melted down and used to make many items from clothes to food wrappers and containers.
It takes about 600 nurdles to create one small plastic water bottle.
They are regarded as one of the worst – and most common – types of marine pollution, with billions of the pellets believed to be contaminating oceans after being dispersed from containers which have fallen off ships.
France and Spain have been particularly badly affected, with millions of the small beads washing up on beaches during the last year.
In January, the French government announced it would be pursuing legal action over an ‘environmental nightmare’ caused by waves of nurdles coming ashore along its Atlantic coastline, particularly Brittany.
Last year hundreds of packets of nuts, as well as air fresheners, bags of coffee and toothbrushes destined for Lidl supermarkets washed up along beaches in the Channel Islands after a container fell off a ship in the mid-Atlantic.
