Tregantle Beach is drenched in a dazzling light evocative of a painting by British landscape artist JMW Turner as sea, sky, and sun mix on an early spring afternoon.
“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, or “nurdles”, sometimes nicknamed “mermaids’ tears”, out of the Cornwall sand.
The tiny particles of plastic, the size of a lentil, are employed by industry to make plastic products.
However, if they are spilled at industrial sites, they can be washed down drains and subsequently into the sea.
According to the UK organization Fauna & Flora International, 11.5 trillion nurdles end up in the water each year.
When released into the wild, the nurdles circulate on ocean currents and frequently wash up on beaches and other coasts.
Because the small pellets resemble fish eggs, birds and other sea creatures will consume them, causing the entire food chain to suffer, according to Arnold.
He is one of roughly ten people taking part in a beach clean-up in England’s southwestern Cornwall region, using a contraption he designed out of a plastic basin, a big grid, and a series of tubes.
“It uses a filtering and water floating system to separate plastic waste from natural waste and sand,” the former engineer explains.
He then incorporates the collected nurdles and other microplastics (little particles of plastic that have broken off larger pieces of plastic) into his artworks.
