Monday, April 13, 2020

Dude Uses Free Time to Sort Through Ocean Plastic


Rob Arnold has spent a dizzying amount of time sifting through washed up litter, and has some interesting and informative things to say about the plastic he's seen. Some of this stuff can even be traced back to specific incidents from decades ago, which is crazy to think about.

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Mulch - Rob's post OMG Washed litter from Tregantle beach on my drive, drying in the sun.

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Adaptation - Rob's post It's always good when you can date a found item. Here we have a give-away toy by Kelloggs from 1958! Incredibly it will have been laying in the environment for 62 years!

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Text - Rob's post Not sure how I spotted this little treasure among the plastic fragments. Tiny mobile phone, possibly belonging to Sindy, Barbie or Ken. By the look of the style of phone, early 90's I would think. 189 3 comments

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Rock - Rob's post WOAH A pyroplastic pebble.

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Text - A pyroplastic pebble. Thought to be created from the uncontrolled burning of plastic. In the marine environment where it's exposed to the same erosive conditions as rock it wears down to look just like the pebbles on the beach. Much softer than rock it continually sheds microplastic particles, plastic 'dust' into the sea.

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Text - Lego flippers from the Tokio Express container spill off Landsend in 1997. These flippers have been in the marine environment for 23 years! This particular pair looking almost like new, still connected to the sprue. Where have they been all this time?

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Text - The number of flippers on the consignment was only 418,000. So Tregantle along with the rest of Cornwall seem to have retained a very high proportion.

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Community - SORTING OUT LOCKDOWN This is the fun part of the big sort, filing away all the interesting items for future awareness raising photographs.

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Text - Doh's nest PREVIOUS FINDS Tregantle Beach, Trinkets, Treasures and Trash. Date-able pieces including 17 items of Lego from Tokio Express container spill in '97, model Guardsman given away with Kelloggs Cornflakes in 1958!!. and vintage poppit beads from the 50's. Oh, and more Nestlé bloody plastic packaging!

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Font - Last tally of Lego flippers from this sort, 290! I've been collecting Lego flippers from the 97 container spill for the last 3 years. I now have over 900 from this one Cornish beach, Tregantle. (Arty pic to follow)

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Text - I think finding this many flippers supports the theory that deep sandy beaches like Tregantle capture the microplastic and then hold it within the sand, possibly for decades even. Had all these flippers been drifting in the ocean and washing in and out of beaches they would have dispersed much further away than the relatively short distance,120 miles or so from the spill location. So I think they must have been held-up somewhere, most probably buried in the sand along with the many other

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Soil - DRYING IT ALL Drying microplastics in the back garden too!

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Font - NURDLES BY THE MILLION! Some of the 5 million nurdles and bio-beads separated from the 250kg of plastic collected from

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