Final signature count: 17,949

17,949 signatures toward our 50,000 goal

As the use of gasoline declines, oil and gas giant Royal Dutch Shell has found a product to take its place: plastic. Returning to the polyethylene market, they’re building a 386-acre plant on the site of a long-shuttered zinc smelter on the Ohio River - where they plan to pump out 1.8 million tons of plastic each year.

Shell plans on manufacturing the plastic in the form of nurdles: tiny virgin plastic pellets that will be used to create new platic products. Nurdles are a tremendous yet often overlooked pollution disaster, and the plant intends to produce about 80 trillion of them a year.

The plastic products these nurdles are used to create, like the vast majority of all plastic made up to now, will likely not be recycled. They will exist virtually forever in our ecosystems, crumbling into microplastics and adding to our already polluted oceans, coastlines, and landfills.

The nurdles themselves are also considered microplastics, and they cause other serious environmental damage. Spills at the factory, during transportation, or at the destination facility are common, contaminating our waterways, rivers, and oceans. Loose nurdles bear a remarkable resemblance to fish eggs, which fish, seabirds, and other marine animals mistake them for. When eaten, they can clog up digestive systems and cause starvation; or if the animal survives, the undigestable plastic nurdles become an indelible part of our food chain.

Let’s make our voices heard. For the sake of our planet, tell Shell CEO Ben van Beurden to reconsider this plan to massively increase plastic production. Our oceans, and all the lives they support, are worth protecting.