Millions of Plastic Pellets Flooding, Polluting Marine Life Eco-System and pristine beaches on the English coast

‘It does not disappear’: Activists remove non-biodegradable microplastics from a Cornwall beach.

On an early spring afternoon, Tregantle Beach is bathed in a dazzling light reminiscent of a painting by British landscape artist JMW Turner as sea, sky, and sun merge.

“It’s beautiful, right? But look at your feet,” says Rob Arnold, 65, an environmental activist and artist, crouching down to pick tiny plastic balls out of the Cornwall sand.

The plastic bits are the size of lentils and are used by industry to manufacture plastic products. They are known as nurdles and are sometimes nicknamed “mermaids’ tears” because they can be swept into drains and the sea when spilt at industrial facilities.

An estimated 11.5 trillion nurdles end up in the ocean each year, according to the UK charity Fauna & Flora International.

Once released into the natural environment, the nurdles circulate on ocean currents and often wash up on beaches and other shores.

Arnold says they look like fish eggs, so birds and other sea life eat the pellets. The pellets also absorb toxic pollutants, adversely affecting the entire food chain.

He is among about 10 people participating in a cleanup on the beach in southwestern England’s Cornwall region. He uses a device he invented made from a plastic basin, a large grid, and a set of tubes.

“It separates plastic waste from natural waste and sand, thanks to a filtering and water floating system,” the former engineer says.

He then uses the collected nurdles and other microplastics – tiny bits of plastic that have broken off larger pieces – in artworks.

Jed Louis, 58, wearing a khaki hoodie bearing the name of the local beach cleanup association, says several factors add to the beach’s vulnerability.

“This beach is particularly polluted because of its geographical location, the sea currents that affect it and its very open shape,” he says.

“In autumn and winter, we find the most microplastics because of the weather,” Louis says. “Storms, thunderstorms and winds – it brings them to the surface.

“Unfortunately the plastic remains, it does not disappear.”

Another volunteer, Claire Wallerstein, 53, says the work is like doing archaeology.

“If you dig in the sand, you’ll find different layers of plastic,” she says.

Some of the nurdles go to Arnold for his artistic creations, while others are used to raise awareness in schools.

The rest, which cannot be recycled, are incinerated in the rubbish.

After three hours, the volunteers have cleaned just a few square metres of the beach.

Arnold looks at his loot – a large tarp filled with nurdles and other microplastics.

Once dried and sorted, he can add them to the 20 million nurdles he has collected over six years. He stores them in a friend’s garage.

Arnold’s most notable work using the nurdles is a 1.7-metre (5.5-foot) sculpture, similar to the Moai statues of Easter Island.

The work, A Lesson from History, is on display at the National Maritime Museum Cornwall in the coastal town of Falmouth.

“It’s a metaphor for what we are doing here to our planet Earth,” Arnold says. “We are polluting our planet, using its resources. If we destroy it, we have nowhere to go. This is our only home.”

For his next creation, he wants to mould the tiny plastic pellets into a meteorite headed towards Earth in a nod to the one that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.

After cleaning up the beach and packing his nurdle-filled bags, Arnold looks disillusioned.

“Sometimes I think about throwing all my bags of nurdles into the river from a bridge,” he says. “It would be so shocking that maybe, finally, people would realise.”