Nurdles

Came across a new word and a new disaster in the paper this morning:

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch consists of two concentrations of mostly plastic garbage caught in swirling ocean gyres between the U.S. and Japan. Similar phenomena exist around the globe. But they aren't just floating landfills that can be fixed by removing trash. Why?

Plastic does not biodegrade. It undergoes a solar-driven process called photodegradation. The sun breaks down the plastic into smaller pieces called nurdles, which retain the plastic's polymer structure. So, much of the millions of tons of pollution in these garbage patches consist of ubiquitous nurdles in a watery soup. In the North Pacific gyre, plastics outnumber surface plankton six-to-one, according to Capt. Charles Moore, the leading researcher.
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/ci_10012838

In my search for a picture of nurdles I found a great web site led by people who are actively devising solutions to this man-made catastrophe, check out:

http://www.crypticmoth.com/2006/11/plastic-vortex.html