The Port of Tyne has said the global shipping industry must learn lessons from a spill that saw billions of tiny plastic pellets enter the river and the North Sea.
The spill occurred within five seconds of a collision between the Wind Orca and the BG Orange at the port on Sunday, July 19, which ripped open shipping containers containing nurdles. A dockside crane also collapsed as a result of the collision.
Clean-up and calls for change
A huge clean-up operation has taken place on the region's beaches, while the Port has appointed contractors to work on the clean-up in the River Tyne. The Port's CEO is calling on the global shipping industry to change the way nurdles are transported and classified to prevent future environmental disasters like this one.
Matt Beeton, Port of Tyne CEO, said: "Having these nurdles, they're class as non-toxic and if you eat them, they might not be. But the spill has had a huge impact."
He added: "We need to learn lessons about how to transport them properly, how they're categorised and how they're transported on vessels. We will work with the mayor, authorities and make sure we play our part on this, it's horrendous."
How the spill was discovered
Staff were aware that something had spilled into the river following the collision between the Wind Orca and the BG Orange on July 19, but not exactly what it was. Once bosses could enter the site after a police cordon came down on Monday, July 20, they saw on CCTV footage that nurdles had spilled within five seconds of the collision between the vessels.
Mr Beeton says that changing the classification on nurdles and the way they're transported could limit the effects of spills like the one we have seen in our region.
He continued: "If they'd been in containers in the middle of the ships, we wouldn't have had these issues. It would help us understand what goes into the river."
Recovery and international call
He says that a disaster recovery plan was immediately activated, and that teams did everything they possibly could - and that the situation "could have been a lot worse". He said the Port of Tyne will play an active role in driving change, but there was "no point" in the Port doing it alone.
He said: "It's not just the UK, I want global shipping to learn from this, it needs to be an international thing."
He added: "It's happened more than once, we need to learn lessons so it doesn't happen again. I don't want another port or region to have to go through this."
