The Funny Name that Kills

By Rabbi Ed Rosenthal, CEO and Founder, Repair the Sea

I Love Dr. Suess! His books have brought happiness and wonder to millions of children and their parents over the years. Like most people, I grew up with “Green Eggs & Ham,” “Hop on Pop,” “Horton Hears a Who,” and so many more. One of my favorites, with a deep, hidden message, is “Yertle, the Turtle.” 

In Yertle the Turtle, a proud and power-hungry turtle named Yertle commands his fellow turtles to stack themselves beneath him, creating a tower to elevate his throne. As the stack grows higher, Yertle's arrogance and disregard for the well-being of others intensify. Ultimately, the tower collapses when the bottom turtle, Mack, burps, toppling Yertle from his self-made pedestal. The story serves as a poignant allegory for unchecked ambition and the exploitation of others for personal gain.

In our world, a similar disregard for the environment manifests in the form of nurdles; tiny plastic pellets, which are the pre-production components of nearly all plastic items produced around the world. While their funny name may be reminiscent of Dr. Suess, these microplastics, 2-5mm in size, are anything but funny or cute. In the US alone, about 60 billion pounds of nurdles are produced every year. Because they are so cheap and so small, little effort is actually put forth into cleaning up nurdles during or after the manufacturing of plastic products. There are also cases of whole containers of nurdles falling off cargo ships at sea, releasing billions of nurdles into the marine environment. It's estimated that approximately 446,000 tons of nurdles (that's about 2 trillion pellets) end up in the marine environment every year.* Because they resemble fish eggs or other small edibles in the water, nurdles are often eaten by marine life, causing harm and even death due to their indigestibility and the toxic chemicals they contain.

Nurdles are plastic pellets used in manufacturing that are harmful and oftentimes deadly to marine life

As I reflect on the lessons from Yertle the Turtle and the realities of plastic pollution, I know the story was never about turtles. It's about power, arrogance, and the danger of believing we can rise higher while ignoring the suffering beneath us. Today, our tower is built not of turtles, but of convenience, consumption, and disposable plastic. And like Yertle, we often sit comfortably above the damage, pretending the cries from below do not matter.

Jewish tradition teaches otherwise. The Mitzvot of Bal Tashchit (the prohibition against needless waste and destruction) and Tzar Ba’alei Chayim (the prohibition against causing pain to animals) insist that creation is not ours to exploit recklessly, but is ours to protect with humility and care. Reducing our dependence on single-use plastics, participating in clean-up efforts, and embracing sustainable practices are not merely environmental choices. For us, as Jews, they are moral obligations.

Dr. Seuss understood something profound: eventually, those at the bottom can no longer bear the weight. The Ocean, marine life, and the entire aquatic environment are already straining beneath the burden of our plastic addiction. If we continue to ignore the consequences, the tower we have built will collapse under its own selfishness. And when that happens, we may discover too late that we have become Yertle the Turtle ourselves; perched high upon a throne of waste, believing ourselves rulers, while all along we were simply sitting on the world we were meant to protect.

* https://www.nurdlehunt.org.uk/the-problem.html