The world’s major plastics producers have come together for Operation Clean Sweep (OCS), with the promise to sweep up every last granulate of plastic in the factory halls and feed it back into the production process.

The initiative has been running since 1991 (in Europe since 2015), with the aim of preventing the loss of plastic granules (pellets, flakes, and powders) along the entire value chain. Even the Chinese Plastics Processing Industry Association (CPPIA) is involved.

But all it takes is one moment of negligence for even the most well-intentioned efforts to be rendered absurd.

This was recently seen on the beaches in the north of Spain, where bags and containers of plastic pellets that had fallen off a lorry – scratch that: a cargo ship – had washed ashore. As it stands, the beach-cleaning crews can barely keep up the effort to remove these plastic grains of “sand”.

Will the European Union’s SUP Directive also apply in this case? There is no chance of reuse.