ocean plastic sources: microbeads

Tiny plastic beads pollute the ocean and beaches the world over, they can often be found at the high-tide line, caught up in the seaweed and debris left there. They are about 0.3 mm in diameter, produced either by the plastic industry (and known as pellets or nurdles) or by the cosmetic industry. They are classed as primary microplastics as they are specifically manufactured to be smaller than 5 mm in diameter.

Globally an estimated 250,000 tonnes of nurdles enter the ocean every year. Nurdles are produced in their billions to be melted down and converted into plastic products and, because of their size, are often lost or spilled in the process, either in the production, handling or transport stage. Some are spilled directly into the ocean (as the 2021 sinking of the MV X-Press Pearl off the coast of Sri Lanka showed with an estimated 78 tonnes of nurdles released into the Indian Ocean) or they make their way there via drainage systems and groundwater. Easily ingested, nurdles have been found in marine life and seabirds all over the world. 

As with all types of pollution, the best way to tackle the problem of nurdles is at their source, establishing best practice procedures to eliminate the improper disposal of any plastic materials in the production phase. Operation Clean Sweep (OCS) is leading the way in establishing such procedures.

Microbead pollution from cosmetics is a relatively new phenomenon. Although the idea for the use of microbeads in the cosmetics industry evolved already in the 1960s it was only in the 1990s that commercial use of synthetic beads took off in personal hygiene and cosmetic products such as face washes, shampoos, shaving creams and toothpastes to cleanse and exfoliate. All but impossible to filter out of the wastewater, trillions of microbeads end up in the ocean each year. Natural materials with similar polishing or exfoliating functions like cocoa beans, pumice, sea salt or crushed almonds were replaced with tiny plastic beads of polyethylene (PE), polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polypropylene (PP), polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) and nylon as the cosmetics industry quickly embraced what appeared to be a more efficient product and adapt its use without consideration of any possible detrimental effect on the environment. Similar to microfibres, once in the wastewater beads are almost impossible to remove due to their tiny size, and once again, the fact that the plastic does not decompose means that once they have entered the ocean they are there to stay. Again, as with microfibres, the chemicals already inherent in them (such as phthalates in nail varnish or hair spray) together with those they attract and absorb from the water effect both marine and eventually human life as they make their way up the marine food chain. One plastic microbead can be a million times more toxic than the water around it.

While microfibres can be caught before making their way into the ocean through the use of filters in washing machines or improved filtration systems in wastewater plants., microbeads tend to pass through these filtration systems leaving us with just one effective solution: avoid using them in the first place. Returning to natural alternatives such as those mentioned above or using beeswax, rice bran wax, jojoba waxes, starches derived from corn, tapioca and carnauba, seaweed, silica, or clay would be best.

There are currently just a handful of countries where legislation banning the use of microbeads exists: Canada, China France, Italy, New Zealand, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States of America have endorsed acts banning the use of microbeads in cosmetics products while bans in a number of other countries such as Brazil and India are due to come into force soon. In the meantime some companies in the cosmetics industry have stepped up in response to pressure from consumers, discontinuing the use of synthetic particles in their products. Regional groups of cosmetic manufacturers such as Cosmetics Europe have successfully implemented their own procedure with voluntary initiatives to phase out the use of beads. Microbeads have, for example, been removed from all rinse-off products under the European Union Ecolabel and 448 brands from 119 different manufacturers have so far promised to remove plastic microbeads from their products.