Just before covid, I traveled to Charleston, SC for @audubonsociety magazine. It's in the midst of a quiet transformation into a plastic-export town. I found the raw material—tiny plastic pellets the size of fish eggs—on every single beach I went to. https://www.audubon.org/news/a-new-plastic-wave-coming-our-shores

US natural gas is now too cheap to be worth much as energy. So it's being made into plastic. Texas makes so much the port of Houston is running out of space to export it. Now these raw plastic pellets are crossing the US on train cars to other ports. They spill all along the way

These pellets (aka "nurdles") are basically an unregulated form of pollution. They are totally new to these port cities, which have not yet realized how hard they are to control. They look like food to birds, and new research suggests they accumulate PCBs.

Despite this, Charleston has more than tripled its plastic exports since 2017, courting packagers with big tax breaks. A similar story is unfolding in Long Beach, CA and Savannah, GA. The nurdles are mostly shipped to Asia and some to Europe, to make more single-use plastics.

Nurdles have been turning up like sleet on beaches all around the world in the last 10 years as plastic production spiked. Here's nurdles washed up on a beach in Hong Kong.

Now some see signs this scene is coming for the US. (In Texas it already has: https://www.texasobserver.org/nurdle-by-nurdle-citizens-took-on-a-billion-dollar-plastic-company-and-won/)

But for neighborhoods near where gas is extracted, goes through pipelines, and where it's refined to make plastic, its impact has been a reality for years: extreme air pollution and higher disease rates. These communities are almost always low-income and people of color.

Anyway, Charleston: The irony is that the city has a new single-use plastic ban. Few residents realize that despite their new compostable to-go containers, plastic will show up on their beaches (and be supported by their city) regardless.

There is much more in the story, which you should click on for the brilliant infographics by @kathrynpeek and striking images by @JustinCookPhoto alone: https://www.audubon.org/news/a-new-plastic-wave-coming-our-shores