Pollution: what we know about "mermaid's tears", these plastic balls that wash up on the beaches

Charles Guyard, edited by Maxime Asseo 7:29 p.m., January 20, 2023

"We had the Erika oil spill, arrivals of small sachets of white powder and detonators", list Jean-Michel Brard, mayor of Pornic in Loire-Atlantique, who thought he had already seen everything and known everything about his beaches.

Unfortunately, he was not at the end of his surprises, since last Friday, he has seen thousands of small plastic balls wash up on the coast.

Poetically nicknamed "mermaid's tears", these little balls, which are not, however, anything to cheer about, are used in the plastics industry to make bottle caps.

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A container that fell from a freighter 

"It's unmanageable. We can't sift the sand because there is some on all the beaches, in all the coves and on the entire coastline between the rocks. It's just unfeasible", grumbles the mayor of Pornic .

A plastic pollution which would come from a container fallen from a cargo ship offshore and brought back to the coast with the winds, in particular with the recent storm Gérard.

However, it is difficult, if not impossible, to trace the exact origin, which has not prevented several communities from filing a complaint against X, such as the town hall of Pornic.

"Very honestly, we did not do it to recover compensation. What interests us is to alert because it is no longer possible for things to continue like this. We are playing with the health of human beings. We are part of biodiversity, we too", insists Jean-Michel Brard.

In the meantime, volunteers will try to collect as many plastic balls as possible on the beaches of the seaside resort this Saturday, after a call for collection from the Surfrider association.