This Thursday, Portuguese authorities found plastic pellets on several beaches in the municipalities of Viana do Castelo and Caminha, in the north of the country, although it is not known for the time being whether these are related to the spill that has been affecting the Spanish coasts for more than a year has hit. one month. .

The National Maritime Authority (AMN) confirmed that these small plastic balls have been identified on several beaches, but they show “some signs of wear” and they do not know if they are the same ones that fell into the sea from the Toconao ship. This Liberian-flagged ship lost six containers containing 26.3 tons of pellets on December 8, 40 nautical miles off the Portuguese coast, off Viana do Castelo.

Search for ‘mermaid tears’

With sieves in hand, hundreds of volunteers are trying to recover millions of tiny plastic pellets spilled into the sea by a cargo ship in December, flooding Spain’s northwestern beaches and causing a political storm.

The “pellets” or small white balls, with a diameter of about 5 millimeters, have been piling up on the beaches of the Galicia region for days since six containers from a Liberian flagship, which was the route between the ports of Algeciras, in Spain, and Rotterdam, Netherlands.

According to Danish shipping giant Maersk, which owns the containers, one of them contained bags of plastic granules, mainly used to produce bottles.

The Catalan chemical industry, which according to the sector’s own data is responsible for 70% of plastic production in Spain, has been causing pellets and microplastics to end up on Tarragona’s beaches and rivers for years. Photo: — Quique García

In Galicia, a region that commemorates the oil spill caused in 2002 by the sinking of the Prestige oil tanker, volunteers have been sifting for several days to clean the beaches of the millions of pellets.

This environmental problem, which has been denounced by several NGOs, has led the Generalitat of Catalonia to open a file against eight chemical companies, which could be expanded in the coming days. These pellets, small balls in different colors and round shapes, are the raw material for the manufacture of plastics.

Complicated collection

The clean-up tasks are organized by organizations such as Ecologistas en Acción, which accuse the regional authorities of ‘passivity’.

The latter announced on Monday the mobilization of 200 people to help clean the beaches.

The “pellets” “are used to manufacture all kinds of products, but their small size makes their collection very complicated once they are mixed with the sand,” Ecologistas en Acción said in a statement, which filed a complaint against the shipping company on Tuesday . for ‘crimes against the environment’.

On Monday, the Spanish Public Prosecution Service had already announced the opening of an investigation.

According to an estimate commissioned by the European Commission, the EU’s executive body, up to 167,000 tonnes of these plastic microbeads, also known as ‘mermaid tears’, entered the European environment annually in 2018.

The pellets are ingested by marine animals, so they can end up in human food. (JO)