City Biodiversity staff conducts Nurdle hunt at Silverstroom
11 November 2021
The City of Cape Town’s Biodiversity management staff from the Witzands Aquifer Nature Reserve conducted a nurdle hunt at the Silverstroom beach recently to assist in a clean-up effort.
This formed part of a global effort, the Great Global Nurdle Hunt which uses citizen research and knowledge to get a handle on the serious nurdle pollution issue we currently face.
Nurdles are small pre-production plastic pellets used as raw material for manufacturing plastic products. Nurdles are regularly lost to the environment following spills during packaging, transporting and manufacturing. Spilt nurdles enter stormwater drains and end up in waterways, estuaries, oceans and beaches, where they can inadvertently be ingested by marine fauna such as turtle hatchlings, birds and fish.
Citizens can continue to contribute to ongoing research to highlight the general nurdle pollution problem by recording nurdle sightings on beaches using the international Great Global Nurdle Hunt platform (www.nurdlehunt.org.uk). The team’s efforts and findings were recorded in a report that was recently presented at COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland. Some 221 nurdles were found by the team of three volunteers covering a 120 metre coastal strip within an hour.
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Published by:
City of Cape Town, Media Office
