Lanzarote’s Emergency Services Consortium has confirmed that the plastic balls recently discovered on Playa La Garita in Arrieta are not related to a recent spill of plastic pellets off the coast of Galicia in Spain.
Spanish news reports have been filled with news of millions of plastic pellets, known as nurdles in English, being washed up on Spanish beaches after a cargo ship lost part of its load in mid-December.
However, expert analysis has shown that plastic waste at La Garita is not nurdles, but balls of expanded polystyrene.
Nevertheless, Lanzarote’s northern beaches have been covered in micro-plastic waste for several years, and it is easy to find nurdles and other examples of plastic waste at the high tide line of Famara beach and other locations.
Lanzarote is a world reference in the field of micro-plastic waste, and it has recently been announced that MICRO, the international scientific conference on the subject, will once again be held on the island this September.
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