A search of hundreds of beaches across the UK has found almost three-quarters of them are littered with tiny plastic pellets.
The lentil-size pellets known as “nurdles” are used as a raw material by industry to make new plastic products.
But searches of 279 shorelines from Shetland to Scilly revealed that 205 (73%) contained pellets.
The largest number recorded in the Great Winter Nurdle Hunt weekend in early February were found at Widemouth Bay in Cornwall, where 33 volunteers from the Widemouth Task Force collected about 127,500 pellets on a 100-metre stretch of beach.
Thousands of the tiny pellets were spotted by volunteers over a short period in locations from Porth Neigwl in Wales to the shoreline in front of the dunes at Seaton Carew near Hartlepool, County Durham, and after stormy conditions on the Isle of Wight.
More than 600 volunteers took part in the hunt organised by Fidra, the Scottish environmental charity, in collaboration with the Environmental Investigation Agency, Fauna and Flora International, Greenpeace, the Marine Conservation Society and Surfers Against Sewage.
The lightweight nurdles can escape into the environment at various points during their manufacture, transport or use, spilling into rivers and oceans or getting into drains where they are washed out to sea. It is thought that billions are lost in the UK each year.
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