Pressure mounts over Tyne nurdle clean-up as mayor demands polluters pay

Photo Credit: AdobeStock

The company that owns the vessel involved in the River Tyne nurdle spill has admitted its response has fallen short of what the community expected, as the North East mayor presses the firms responsible to fund what she has called the worst nurdle pollution incident in Europe. Up to 25 tonnes of plastic pellets, an estimated one billion nurdles, entered the river after the offshore wind installation vessel Wind Orca collided with the berthed container ship BG Orange at the Port of Tyne on 19 July. In the days since, the pellets have washed ashore along beaches north and south of the Tyne, prompting a major multi-agency and community clean-up.

Polluter-pays row

North East mayor Kim McGuinness wrote to Cadeler, the Danish offshore wind company that owns the Wind Orca, and to BG Freight Line, demanding the firms fund the clean-up rather than wait for the outcome of what she expects to be a long investigation. She argued the companies had a “moral duty” to act and that North East taxpayers should not be left to cover the cost. In reply, Cadeler chief executive Mikkel Gleerup acknowledged that the pace of the initial mobilisation of specialist contractors had “not met community expectations”, and confirmed that additional resources were being deployed to step up the operation. The specialist response is being coordinated through the owners and insurers of the BG Orange, who have appointed Solis Marine as spill managers and Briggs Marine as clean-up contractors. The Port of Tyne has separately engaged pollution response firm Ambipar. McGuinness welcomed the commitment but said she would keep pressing the companies until the work was complete. South Tyneside Council has confirmed it will seek to recover its costs from the insurers of those responsible; the scale of the eventual bill is unknown, though a comparable spill off Portugal in December 2023 was reported to have cost around £2 million to clear.

The clean-up so far

The response is being run through a formal multi-agency Recovery Coordinating Group involving South and North Tyneside councils, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, the Marine Accident Investigation Branch, Northumbria Police and the Port of Tyne. The port placed a floating boom around the BG Orange to limit further loss and deployed boats to skim pellets from the water, and it has now emptied the two damaged containers that split open in the collision, securing them inside a scaffolding frame and using an industrial vacuum to remove the remaining pellets. On the beaches, councils have asked the public not to attempt unsupervised clean-up and are organising supervised volunteer sessions as suitable equipment arrives. Residents have been advised not to handle pellets unnecessarily and to keep dogs on leads, particularly around Littlehaven beach in South Shields, close to the important seabird colonies at Marsden Bay.

Small pellets, wide reach

Nurdles are the lentil-sized plastic pellets used as feedstock for almost all plastic manufacturing. Because they float and are easily carried by tides and wind, spills of this kind spread far beyond the impact site and are near-impossible to recover fully. Fidra, the environmental charity whose estimate put the release at around one billion pellets, has documented nurdles in the stomachs of species ranging from North Sea seabirds to green turtles off Brazil, and its most recent UK survey found pellets at 84 per cent of the protected sites it sampled. Senior project manager Heather McFarlane described it as devastating to see another pellet spill and called for stronger UK regulation on land and mandatory measures at sea. The incident echoes the March 2025 collision of the Solong and the tanker Stena Immaculate off East Yorkshire, after which Fidra questioned whether the UK’s prevention and response arrangements were fit for purpose. Nurdles are still not classified as hazardous under international maritime rules, which limits the obligations placed on shipping firms and ports, and environmental groups are likely to renew calls for that to change.

Sources: