5 hours Ago By Bianca Hall
The glasses on your face, the device in your hand and components in the bike you ride – plastic is everywhere, and so is its embryonic form: nurdles. Every year, more than 2.5 billion nurdles – lentil-sized plastic resin pellets – enter Port Phillip Bay through stormwater drains.
Most are discharged from manufacturing sites along or near the Yarra River and Maribyrnong River. Litter is also increasing in both rivers. Port Phillip EcoCentre executive officer April Seymore with nurdles found in the area.
Credit: Penny Stephens “Once you notice it on a clean beach you can’t unsee it,” said Port Phillip EcoCentre executive officer April Seymore. “They look like a little lentil or a little bead, and they’re very camouflaged with the sand, which is part of what makes them dangerous to animals. They look like a little egg or something delicious, but they actually are a little toxic bomb of chemical that go into the food chain.
” Nurdles, a form of microplastic, are made into everything from keyboard components to water bottles. The damage caused by microplastics is untold: they are mistaken for food by seabirds and marine animals, and leech petrochemicals into the environment. Marine health organisation Tangaroa Blue Foundation and Port Phillip EcoCentre have been auditing sites around Melbourne for microplastics, particularly nurdles, for a decade.
Tangaroa Blue founder and chief executive Heidi Tait said some regularly audited factories were “serial offenders”, releasing nurdles into the natural environment. “For the worst offenders, we’re talking about tens of thousands of microplastics entering the stormwater trap in front of their premises every single time we service those traps, which is generally done every six to eight weeks,” she said. Last year, citizen scientists inspected 22 sites, targeting plastic industry operators in particular.
An Environmental Justice Australia spokesperson said more than half the sites had moderate, significant or highly significant nurdle pollution. Stormwater drains also showed high numbers of nurdles, including more than 10,000 pellets each in three drain traps. A bag full of nurdles – plastic in its embryonic form – splits open and spills from one of the riverside sites surveyed in Melbourne.
Credit: Environmental Justice Australia. Environmental Justice Australia lawyers this week wrote to Victorian Environment Minister Steve Dimopoulos and the state’s Environment Protection Authority (EPA) on behalf of the community groups to urge action. EJA senior lawyer Virginia Trescowthick said it was critical existing environmental protection laws be used to help prevent plastics entering Victoria’s marine environment.
“There’s a compelling case for the Victorian EPA to use all of the tools available under the state’s laws to prevent harm to the environment from microplastic pollution.” Tait said the organisations were not inclined to name and shame factory owners who continued to pollute. “There are many factories out there that need to tidy up their act, but there’s also some really good factories that can show how to do it,” she said.
“What we’re saying is, the EPA have a regulation in place; they have a responsibility to be addressing this, and they’re not doing it.” An EPA spokesman said the agency always sought to protect the environment and took an active role with enforcement. “Everyone has a duty to protect the environment and updated industry advice on managing [plastic] feedstock was issued in November last year following a program with environmental group Tangaroa Blue,” he said.
“Where any business, not just those in the plastics industry, fails to meet their duty to properly manage their waste or materials, EPA is using its compliance and enforcement policy to penalise but also to inform an offender to improve their management practices and reduce risks posed by their business activity.” In a new report on the growing problem of microplastics in Port Phillip Bay, the environment groups describe visiting four unidentified sites on multiple occasions. Each time moderate and/or significant plastic nurdle pollution had been released from the factories.
Citizen scientists reported five separate plastics operators to the EPA, and included photographic evidence of the pollution, the report stated. “Citizen scientists conducted further site inspections for the five reported plastic industry operators. All five operators continued to spill and or leak plastic feedstock pollution after the pollution incident reports were made to the EPA in December 2023.
” In their letter, the environment groups warn Victoria’s current regulatory approach is failing to prevent risks of harm to the environment. As Victoria transitions to a circular economy, it is critical that existing environmental laws be used to prevent plastics entering waterways, they argued. They also recommended the EPA use the “ permissions scheme ” to regulate pollution from plastic industry operators, and ensure operators can be reasonably expected to know how to comply with their duties.
A government spokesperson said Victoria had strengthened laws for the EPA to crack down on polluters, including tougher penalties for repeat offenders. “We’re making it easier for Victorians to recycle and keep broken down plastic out of our environment with the roll-out of our statewide four bins system, including education campaigns to teach Victorians how to use the new bins, the container deposit scheme and more.”.
