Picture this: You’re at home going about your business; and you wake up one morning, walk outside and discover someone has dumped millions of pieces of garbage onto your lawn. Initially you’ll feel violated and angry. Then you’ll want to know who did it and hold them responsible. Then you’ll want to call law enforcement to make sure whoever is responsible cleans up the mess they made. You’ll also probably be thinking “how in the name of holy hell am I going to clean this up?”
Factor that to the nth degree, and you’ll begin to understand what’s going on with nurdles. Nurdles are small beads of plastic, about the size of a green pea, that are used as raw materials in the manufacturing of plastic items. About six months ago a ship lost a container full of nurdles that subsequently found its way to the bottom of the Mississippi River. Those nurdles, as we speak, are leaking out of the container and finding their way to the banks of the muddy Mississippi and beyond, showing up on beaches as far south as Grand Isle.
Let’s go back to our lawn analogy. The mess is STILL being made. Nobody knows how to stop it. Nobody seems interested in holding the ship responsible for the clean-up, and no agency seems to be overseeing any of it. The lawn analogy IS accurate in that someone’s dumped garbage into our river, and we do feel violated and angry.
But what happens from here? Listen to what Jeff Dorson, Executive Director of the Humane Society had to say this morning. I hope it makes you as mad as it did me.
