Talk:Plastic pellet pollution

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Peer reviewers: Zwiki17.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 06:46, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Name

The proper term for this thing seems to be "plastic resin pellet", which yields a lot more Google hits than the "Nurdle". Maybe renaming it would make sense? Themel 06:43, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Actually, not with quotes around "plastic resin pellet" -- with the quotes, p.r.p. produces 321 hits to 7860 for "nurdle", and although surely some of the "nurdle" hits are for the cricket term, the top ten page of hits seem to be mostly the plastic pellets.Shayanakadidal 04:46, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Is Nurdle used by people in the plastics manufacturing industry, or is it a colloquial term used only when stray pellets are found "in the wild"?--Theodore Kloba (talk) 17:57, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I have been a chemist for over 30 years, most of that in the chemical industry working for a company which was one of the world's largest plastics producer and I had not heard or seen that word until today. Silverchemist (talk) 04:52, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Then what would you call them? Wizard191 (talk) 20:46, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

How about "waste plastic"? No one in industry refers to the resin pellets as "nurdles" and this article talks about US industry making 60 billion pounds of nurdles per year. Industry makes pellets and some small percentage of those pellets become fugitive, THEN they become "nurdles".Silverchemist (talk) 23:07, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

How about "Plastic Pellet Pollution" including both plastic and resin in the title seems redundant. Dwdockter (talk) 15:30, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

I've commented on this in the talk for 'nurdles'. I've spent 20 years in and around the plastics industry and processors who use many tonnes of these pellets, and have never heard them referred to as nurdles either by processors, suppliers or in literature. They're normally just called pellets or granules. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A00:23C8:A739:E01:ACD1:D18B:C818:2209 (talk) 22:39, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Photos needed

I quite like the look of these two photos on Flickr:

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/gentleman_rook/2414135327/
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/jordantam/316091795/

But they're copyrighted. I don't have a Flickr account, and I don't know how to contact users to ask them to release photos. Can anyone help? Anxietycello (talk) 17:08, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

I've made a request of the first gentleman. —Pengo 01:17, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

function

Could someone please say what they do? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.104.220.196 (talk) 04:17, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

I've added their purpose. Wizard191 (talk) 21:46, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

The article is vague and loosely blows through yearly incidents where plastic rests pellets were involved in environmental issues (bias). The years included are 2012, 2017, 2018, 2020, and 2021. For each year there is only a brief explanation of only 1-3 sentences and 1-2 examples that rests pellets were involved oil, including environmental prevention programs. There is loose connections between plastic pellets to other forms of Microplastics polluting the oceans and yet the text never offers the purpose and use of plastic resin pellets and why they even mass produced by manufacturers in the first place. In the 2021 section, from the "Sri Lanka faces disaster as burning ship spills chemicals on beaches" source, the text states that this incident was the worst environmental disaster. This does not carry neutrality and is a strong opinion that is gather directly from the article. The article could go more in depth and commit to demonstrating more examples are where rests plastic pellets are involved, especially considering the text describes how impactful they have been. The article should prove this instead of just stating it. In addition, the purpose needs to be detailed. ~~~~ Kemery1101 (talk) 23:25, 25 April 2022 (UTC). Kemery1101 (talk) 06:26, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

Rewrite urgently needed

This article is mess of conflicting terminology and sources that do not verify content. It's being referenced in a US national newspaper,[1] can someone with expertise (or even accurate knowledge) please work on it?

The intro para and picture discuss plastic pellets BEFORE they are used to make plastic goods. Two paragraphs later, someone seems to have misunderstood the finished little plastic balls (for example in Styrofoam) with the UNFINISHED product. (There's no way that the unfinished product would be a "major contributor" to marine debris -- companies don't just habitually throw away material for unfinished products!)

The "three month study" that quoted isn't talking about either the unfinished good, or the white balls of disintegrating Styrofoam. It's specifically discussing fragments of a finished, decomposing, transparent "liter soda bottle".[2] Then the Wiki article states "Waterborne nurdles, may either be a byproduct of plastic production or pellets broken down from larger chunks of plastic". That's yet ANOTHER definition.

Then this brilliant article concludes with two quite specific statements that have no citations.

This is a prime example of how Wikipedia gets bad media attention. I've (temporarily) rewritten it to state a few basic facts. Piano non troppo (talk) 15:49, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

will someone explain why plastic pellet is not called plastic pellet?

Plastic33 (talk) 00:28, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

This article continues to need a rewrite for clarity and accuracy. A pre-consumer industrial material is still both conflated with and distinguished from a post-consumer waste material. ENeville (talk) 16:34, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

The article needs to have a rewrite and also needs a reassessment of purpose. Several articles on similar topics (Plastic Pollution, Marine Debris, Microplastic, etc) already exist. Thus, I wonder if this particular topic which is still not well-defined in title or purpose would be better as a sub-category in a different article on a similar topic.Zwiki17 (talk) 04:00, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

I believe this article addresses a particular type of pollution from a unique source. These are the raw materials for the molded products you purchase. Their entry into the environment is unique and the people working to reduce this pollution are also unique. (Full disclosure: 20yr employee of plastic pellet producer. I do not speak for my employer) Dwdockter (talk) 15:36, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

This site needs to be scrubbed of the term nurdle except for one instance explaining the rarely used synonym. Just enough so that searches for the term find it. (Full disclosure: 20yr employee of plastic pellet producer. I do not speak for my employer) Dwdockter (talk) 15:41, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

toothpaste squiggle

"nurdle" apparently also is a toothpaste squiggle: http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2010/07/29/colgate-glaxosmithkline-set-to-battle-over-toothpaste-nurdle/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by Arghman (talk • contribs) 17:00, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Renamed to "Plastic particle water pollution"

I have renamed the article to "Plastic particle water pollution" to reflect the content and the fact that nurdle is not in the OED or dictionary.com. Not sure if the new name is the best option. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 22:58, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

I think that the title needs a change. There is already an article on Microplastics as well as Marine Debris. This article is in particular discussing Plastic Resin Pellet Pollution, and nurdle should be the secondary name since it is not the main term used mainly in literature on the topic. Zwiki17 (talk) 03:41, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

I second this proposal to rename the article or at least remove some information.  Plastic resin, which can be a microplastic pellet, does not have to be in this form. As detailed by the text, it is very harmful to the environment, particularly the marine food web as it can be digested by wildlife. Plastic resin pellets are not the same thing as microbeads, which the author promotes reading into. While both are pollutants, the topic of microbeads is irrelevant to the text and would be better off left unmentioned as it distracts the reader from the topic of plastic resin. This mention of microbeads is off topic as the title is “Plastic resin pellet pollution” and not vague like “Marine Plastic Pollution”.~~~~ Kemery1101 (talk) 22:30, 25 April 2022 (UTC) Kemery1101 (talk) 05:32, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

References

Choking?

In the text there is a sentence that says, 'the creatures that make up the base of the marine food chain, such as krill, are prematurely dying by choking on nurdles'. I question this. For me choking implies cutting off air. This cannot happen for a water-living organism. This goes back to the old argument about can a fish drown when taken out of water. I ask if someone more expert in nurdles can edit and clarify this sentence. Thanks Mondegreen de plume (talk) 13:45, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

additional link for the Mato citation

It seems the full article is available here, but I'm not sure if that display is ok and how to add it. Someone please take over. The same article is linked in the Microplastics page.

http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Pellets-Transport-Medium.htm 93.103.88.137 (talk) 22:53, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

I noticed an issue with the citation 11 (http://www.rivistasitiunesco.it/articolo.php?id_articolo=2073). It comes to an error page, this needs to be amended.Zwiki17 (talk) 03:47, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Noted citation 18 does not work either. Generally think that the entirety of actions for creating awareness section could be taken out especially since it is repeated in the microplastics page. I think that the repetition of most likely the same author's work and viewpoint could be an issue of neutrality on these pages. Zwiki17 (talk) 06:51, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

Neutrality

Pages related to plastic pellets are being redirected to here. This obviously means that somebody with an agenda is abusing wikipedia. While the issues discussed on this page are real, there's no need to redirect "microbead" to this article. A disambiguation page would be more helpful to readers. 99.237.75.43 (talk) 03:13, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Plastic pallet redirects to nurdle and microbead now redirects to microbeads. I created the microbead redirect before the microbeads article was written. It has been rectified. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 03:52, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

There are some more biased sources for this article, due to the fact that it is an environmental issue. There are several sources from grassroots organizations along with the more trustworthy scientific research articles. It is hard to check some of the sources; books that are not available online. I tried to balance the anti-plastics feeling of the article by pointing to the efforts made by the producers of plastic to monitor and improve their pellet recovery at the source. I think that the article could still use some more representation from the plastics industry side of the equation because the environmental side is well represented. Zwiki17 (talk) 06:43, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

There is unnoted bias in the work. While plastic pollution is an environmental issue and the topic of plastic resin pellet pollution dives into a type of marine pollution. The article takes an environmental standpoint, while discussing an activist campaign and an environmental project. This goes a step past describing what plastic resin pellets are, where they are found, incidents they have been involved in, and their impacts. The text begins to lose its neutrality as this bias shows through and despite whether it is “right” or “wrong,” it shows a favoring towards an environmental stance, opposed to anti-environmentalism, which favors minimal regulations in the environment and favors Capitalism/ the economy. The article demonstrates the issues of this pollutant, but does not vividly address why companies produce it, what purpose it serves, and how it benefits individuals.  <span data-dtsignatureforswitching="1"></span> Kemery1101 (talk) 23:10, 25 April 2022 (UTC). Source Anti-environmentalism/ green backlash. Anti-Environmentalism. (n.d.). Retrieved April 24, 2022, from https://herinst.org/sbeder/PR/antienvironmentalism.html#.YmeL4S1h3jA Kemery1101 (talk) 06:10, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

External links modified (January 2018)

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Guardian: Nurdles, the worst toxic waste you’ve probably never heard of

Potential useful source here

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/29/nurdles-plastic-pellets-environmental-ocean-spills-toxic-waste-not-classified-hazardous

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 15:15, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Introduction to Policy Analysis

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 28 March 2022 and 30 May 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Kemery1101 (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Kemery1101.

Nurdles are not always marine.

There was a train derailment where nurdles were spilled into the Allegheny River. I can think of another event in my area too which is not a marine area. 2600:4041:292:B600:70C8:8CF6:F54B:F4AD (talk) 12:26, 9 February 2023 (UTC)