388 bottle caps. 154 shopping bags. 217 straws. 251 food packets. 600 pieces of unidentifiable plastic. What do these all have in common? They were found over two days by 600 people taking part in the Discovery Planet Plastic Unwrapped beach clean on Margate seafront.
Over two days over 2200 pieces of plastic waste were collected from the beach. This doesn’t include the 564 cigarette stubs which are also part of the plastic pollution problem, or the hundreds of other metal, paper, wood, ceramic and glass items collected.
Dr Vicky Mason tells us more about the Plastic Unwrapped project and SPS’s involvement:
“Plastic Unwrapped started as an idea to highlight and start a conversation about plastic in the community of Thanet. Funded by the Royal Society of Chemistry and delivered by scientists at the University of Kent in collaboration with Discovery Planet, the idea of the four different workshops was to take a look at the local problem of plastic pollution, understand what it is about plastics that make it such an environmental issue, look at how we can all help by reducing, reusing and recycling more and then focus on the future of plastics and how science can help.
“After the beach clean, the second session looked at the characteristics of plastics and touched on why they are such a problem. Participants in the workshops did some hands on chemistry experiments looking at polymers, a key property of all plastics.
“A final workshop focused on the future of plastic materials by looking at some of the research being carried out in the School of Physical Sciences, University of Kent.“