NEW ORLEANS (AP) - When millions of plastic pellets spilled into the Mississippi River and began washing up along the banks in New Orleans, it wasn’t a government agency or a nonprofit group or even the company that dumped the plastic that finally began the cleanup. It was a pair of recent California transplants armed with a kitchen colander and a bucket.
Hailey Fynaardt and her husband, Dan, started cleaning up pellets, also known as “nurdles,” on the Algiers Point riverbank on Wednesday (Aug. 19). They went out again on Thursday evening, this time with a couple friends. A guy who had been selling ice cream nearby joined in. A family out for a stroll asked if they could help, and then another. By sunset, there were more than a dozen people digging nurdles out of the Mississippi mud.
Fynaardt knows the plastic they’ve collected is only a tiny fraction of the mess. But each nurdle she drops in her bucket is potentially one less nurdle causing trouble in the belly of a fish, turtle or bird.
“It’s blatant pollution right – literally – on our doorstep,” said Fynaardt, a marketing specialist who moved to the Bayou St. John neighborhood a year ago. “I thought an organization more qualified or prepared to do this would do something and I’d support them. But I realized nothing was being done, and every day more of these wash down the river.”
Upwards of 25 tons of nurdles spilled from a cargo ship moored near Napoleon Avenue during an Aug. 2 storm. The ship, operated by French company CMA CGM Group, soon left for Florida and then Egypt. Meanwhile, the nurdles, a raw material for producing plastic products, began piling up on riverbanks in New Orleans, Gretna and Chalmette and flowing toward the Gulf of Mexico, where they’ll cause havoc for a host of marine species.
The Gulf already has one of the world’s highest concentrations of plastic pollution, according to a 2017 study by LSU. Most marine plastic is quite small. It includes nurdles, which regularly spill or blow off of ships, and the fragments of larger plastic items, like drink bottles and grocery bags, that break down over time. Pollutants readily bind to the plastic bits, forming toxic little pills that fish and other animals mistake for food. Creatures living in the deepest ocean trenches have been found with plastic fragments in their stomachs. Pollutants stuck on the plastic get absorbed and passed up the food chain to larger animals, including seafood-eating humans.
“This affects every level of our lives — our water, the marine life, our food and economy,” Fynaardt said. “It felt obvious something had to be done.”
Several government agencies, including the Coast Guard, Port of New Orleans and the state Department of Environmental Quality, have spent weeks trying to determine which of them should be responding to the nurdle spill. On Friday, nearly three weeks after the spill, DEQ announced that CMA CGM had hired a waste-management company to clean up some of the nurdles. The company was assessing the mess on Friday and could begin work during the weekend. DEQ is not requiring or overseeing the work. Investigators say they’ve not determined who is responsible for the spill and don’t know yet if fines or other penalties will be issued.
“I cannot overstate how awesome the people of New Orleans are,” Texas A&M University scientist and plastic pollution expert Jeremy Conkle said on Twitter after seeing photos of Fynaardt’s cleanup crew. “But this should have been done by the state and the polluter. They should send invoices.”
Fynaardt and her husband gathered 5 pounds of nurdles on Wednesday and 20 more pounds on Thursday. They’ve improved their technique, digging a few inches to get sunken nurdles, and their tools. Dan bought metal grates and two-by-fours to build sifter boxes that separate nurdles from heavy loads of mud. Their operation looked like a family of Klondikers on Thursday.
“It really is like panning for gold,” Fynaardt said. “It kind of turned into a competition. I’d hear people saying ‘I’ve got a good one. This is the motherlode!’”
Taking care of the environment has been a lifelong passion for Fynaardt.
“I joke I’m the crazy Californian who pulls cans out of people’s trash to recycle them,” she said. “I’m always urging people to stop using plastic bags and straws.”
A lot of New Orleanians have asked how to join a nurdle cleanup effort. Fynaardt’s advice: Don’t wait for somebody to take the lead. All you need is a bucket, a colander and some shoes you don’t mind getting wet.
“We can either just get sad or angry about this or we can get to work,” she said.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.