#nurdles

Plastic nurdles have been found in 84% of important nature sites surveyed in the UK. Nurdles are tiny pellets that the plastics industry uses to make larger products. They were found in 168 of 195 sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs), so named because of the rare wildlife they harbour. They are given extra protections in an effort to protect them from pollution. The environmental charity Fidra, however, has been running nurdle hunts at SSSIs across the UK since 2013, and found pellets in 84% of them. It also found nurdles in six national parks: Loch Lomond & the Trossachs, North York Moors, New Forest, Pembrokeshire Coast, Eryri (Snowdonia), and South Downs. They are produced at sites around the UK, including Grangemouth in Scotland, and transported by land and sea to be melted down to make almost all of our plastic products. They are lost into the environment by mismanagement in the supply chain – namely, by being accidentally spilled. It is estimated that as many as 53bn nurdles could be lost into the environment in the UK each year.

Excerpt from this story from Inside Climate News:

Once a month for nearly two years, Evan Clark, the Waterkeeper at Three Rivers Waterkeeper, a water quality advocacy organization based in Pittsburgh, has traveled by boat along the Ohio River to Shell’s enormous new plastics plant in Beaver County. 

This facility is a cracker plant, using ethane from fracked gas to make ethylene and ultimately to manufacture up to 1.6 million tons of plastic per year. In his boat, Clark looks for tiny plastic pellets called nurdles and monitors the plant’s outfalls, the places where its wastewater is discharged into the river. 

Since the plant became operational in the fall of 2022, Clark has noticed strong chemical odors at the outfalls—potentially a sign of contaminants like volatile organic compounds, or VOCs—and found many, many nurdles, a feedstock used to make everything from soda bottles to car parts. 

This winter, Clark and the team he works with at the Mountain Watershed Association collected samples from 11 square feet of soil from the Ohio’s shorelines both upstream and downstream of the plant. Three Rivers Waterkeeper works to protect the Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio Rivers, while the Mountain Watershed Association focuses on protecting the Youghiogheny River, a tributary of the Monongahela. 

They found more than 700 nurdles, of all different colors, shapes and sizes. “They start to get kind of a white chalky appearance after they’ve been in the water for a long time,” he said, and nurdles also appear different depending on where they were made.

It was an alarming discovery that has implications beyond Shell, Clark said, although recently the team has been seeing more fresh, similar-looking nurdles that seem to have been in the water for a shorter period of time and could be linked to the Beaver County plant. They haven’t yet been able to procure a sample from Shell to match the nurdles definitively. 

“That is a tiny area, smaller than half a sheet of plywood, and our preliminary analysis of what we’re looking at there didn’t point directly to a problem at Shell,” he said. “But it pointed to a plastics problem that we have throughout the whole region.” 

Karen McVeigh in Earth Island Journal, first in The Guardian. Nurdles: The Worst Toxic Waste You’ve Probably Never Heard Of

Billions of these tiny plastic pellets are floating in the ocean, causing as much damage as oil spills, yet they are still not classified as hazardous

“The sinking of the X-Press Pearl – and spill of chemical products and plastic pellets into the seas of Sri Lanka – caused untold damage to marine life and destroyed local livelihoods,” says Hemantha Withanage, director of the Centre for Environmental Justice in Sri Lanka.

📰 Source

Oh, for the days when I didn’t read WIPs and did not know the longing, and regret, and joy of waiting for updates. As always, I am behind on commenting, but I like to mark these things publicly and if I wait to catch up, it will be years. (All my travel has to be via road trip this past year, which leaves me with time to read but not good access to comment. I’m working on catching up.)

Round One

ASOIAF/Game of Thrones

The Tourney Knight by trulily @trulilyy (14,000 words, last updated November 2020) Summary: An AU in which Brienne sets off for King's Landing to compete in King Renly Baratheon's tourney.Along the way to the capital, she discovers an ensnared Jaime Lannister. She decides to help him, and in so doing, she wins a crucial ally she did not realize she would soon so desperately need.

Intrigue! Jousting! Inspired by the adventures of Dunk & Egg! I love my girl. 

Those Who Favor Fire by LSquared80 (25,000 words, last updated August 2020) Summary: Brienne accompanies Sansa to Castle Black to reunite the girl with her brother, fearful that her own fraught history with the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch - Jaime Lannister - will not bode well for them.

I am deeply intrigued by the idea that Jaime ended up at the Night’s Watch after killing Aerys and being refused a marriage with Brienne and eager to see more of this.

Valonqar by H3L (168,000 words, last updated July 2019 WHY DO I DO THIS TO MYSELF) Summary: The Lannister's lives are interrupted when Joanna Lannister dies in the birthing bed. Her favorite cousin, Lord Selwyn Tarth, comes to Casterly Rock not long after her death and brings with him his son, Galladon, and his daughter, Brienne. Years later Jaime, in chains, must face a very different Brienne than he remembers.

Brienne and Jaime’s friendship when they are little left me besotted, and then their dynamic when they’re adults is entertaining as hell. I love how the plot twists and turns from the source material, and there’s a Cersei reveal which did not surprise me but was an emotional punch even seeing it coming. 

The Keeper by PalyGirl (450,000 words, last updated March 2021) Summary: All Brienne ever wanted was to be a respected knight and serve a just king. The Gods, however, have a different plan for the Lady of Tarth. She must bring together their warriors, weapons and wisdom to defeat the Night King and Army of the Dead. The sworn sword will become the most powerful instrument in the Game of Thrones.

I am torn on this one. I think the plot is intriguing, and I’m invested enough I’ll keep reading (as it stands), but the longer this goes on, the more each chapter quotes previous chapters in full, which I find obnoxious and a waste of reader’s time. I’d rather they trusted the reader to either get the references to earlier parts or to be able to read on even if they miss things. This has some things I love (Brienne and dragons, women being friends and supporting each other, Young Griff is occasionally wonderful) and intriguing character dynamics, but it also leans hard into Brienne believing in the gods and clinging to being a chosen one in ways that don’t always come across as believable to me.

(Note for J/B readers, while the fic is tagged with it, the fic is also tagged “romantic relationships are mentioned by not explored” and so far it’s come across far more Brienne/Young Griff than anything else. And I’m here for that, too, I had no idea how much I’d enjoy them, but at this point, 450,000 words in, I’m also getting tired of the lack of resolution of anything.)

After having talked about it, I think I’d best hold off on reading more until it’s complete and then go through it again with a fresh eye.

Three years, no more by Zeta__Mei @zetaaa (60,000 words, last updated April 2021) Summary: "Nobody had warned Brienne that the Kingslayer was like that. God-like. Nobody had warned her that she had to wed him."

We are SO CLOSE to the ending on this one, 12 chapters posted out of 15, and it has only been a WIP since January 2021, but every time I think about it, I feel like I’m dying for the next chapter. ZM’s writing has this feel to it that I’ve tried and failed to describe before, but I always find it compelling, and their plots are full of interesting twists and turns. (Not-so-secret Targaryens of my favourite sort and the world’s prettiest dragon egg included.)

Taking the Silver by nurdles @nurdles (160,000 words, last updated June 2016 REALLY, I KNOW, I’M PUNISHING MYSELF AT THIS POINT, WHAT THE HELL, ELLIE) Summary: Jamie is sentenced by Queen Daenerys to "Take the Silver" for killing the mad king. Taking the Silver means fighting the Others in the North with Dany's army, something he and Brienne were already doing before he was arrested. But now that he and Brienne are stuck in KIng's Landing for a while, maybe the time has come to let her know how he feels. Between Cersei also being readied to go North and fight, Tyrion with his inappropriate humor and Queen Daenerys' demands and truly terrible decorating choices, will things ever go smoothly for them? Humor, romance, adventure and danger ensue. Plus, everything is better with dragons!

That summary’s not wrong about the humour! I finished this over the weekend while on a long road trip and I laughed out loud often enough I had to explain a whole bunch of things to the driver. It is very irreverent and wonderful to read. I would hate myself for reading something that hasn’t been updated in so long, but I had way too much fun reading it to regret it.

Beauty and the Viper by Rav3nB1ack @drrav3nb (674 words, first chapter posted March 2021) Summary: “Cersei told me that she was keeping a beast down here,” Oberyn said. Brienne hung her head. Beast. She thought she’d hardened herself against the word but hearing it again brought back memories she’d rather forget.  “The way she was bragging, I thought she had captured a wight, a giant or better yet a huge dragon!” he continued. Oberyn regarded her once more. “But you’re no beast.”

I saw the gifset before I saw the fic, I was already interested in Oberyn/Brienne after the gifs from that one interview about who on the show would try to beat her in a fight in order to marry her, and now I am excited to see where this version of that goes.

Constant as the Northern Star by PrettyThief @pretty--thief (60,000 words, last updated April 2021)  Summary: Brienne Tarth does not feel ready to command an entire space station. To make matters worse, the Alliance has assigned to her the most infuriating defense officer she could have (but definitely did not) asked for. The pair of them and the rest of their misfit crew swiftly find themselves mixed up in the reigniting embers of rebellion on the planet Winterfell below. Suddenly the fate of an entire planet, if not the entire galaxy, is up to Brienne and Jaime.

I am a sucker for AUs set in space and though I’m holding off on starting this until it reaches closer to the end (15 posted out of 25 so far) (I’m tempted to start reading right now, so we’ll see how long I last without doing so), but I trust PT as an author, and I know this will be great.

None but the Lonely Heart by OccasionalAvenger was going to go here, BUT IT HAS BEEN COMPLETED! (It appears I am not getting my AO3 notifications, great news.)

Knives Out

Straddle the Line, In Discord and Rhyme by mardia (31,000 words, last updated January 2021) Summary: It’s not until Marta picks up the medical bag that she notices that something is wrong. She can hear Harlan still singing upstairs in the attic, just like she can hear everyone downstairs getting ready for bed, just like she can smell Walt’s cigarettes, the incense Joni is burning in her room, a thousand different things her senses are picking up that Marta has learned to ignore, learned to put to one side. But this--this Marta can’t ignore. Because it’s Ransom’s scent lingering in the room, Ransom’s Tom Ford cologne lingering in a room he has no reason to be in, and as Marta lifts the bag to her nose and takes a careful sniff of the handles--it’s Ransom’s scent, human sweat and pheromones and man-made perfume lingering on a medical bag he has no reason to be touching in the first place.