Ship Crash Spills Up to a Billion Plastic Pellets Into the River Tyne

On 19 July 2026, a ship called Wind Orca hit a docked ship at the Port of Tyne, spilling up to 25 tonnes of nurdles — tiny plastic pellets used to make plastic goods — into the River Tyne. That is roughly a billion pellets. They reached South Shields beach and spread toward Sunderland. The spill site is under three miles from Marsden Bay, home to one of England's most important seabird colonies. Nurdles soak up poisons and are almost impossible to clean from the sea once there.