"Odds & Sods" (old version) - please add to the new thread 2020 instead !

Unknown said:

You are right about that Paul, I remember some time ago when we were last at Leasowe area on the Wirral there seemed to be a lot of plastics washed up on the beach including a large piece of open weave orange soft plastic barrier used when the cordon off the area around road works/drainage channels, etc., plus large water containers that they use on boats. Mike and I collected what we could (difficult with a camera and harness strapped round me and camera/lens dangling precariously as I stooped down ! ) there were a few plastic bottles washed up and general paper/plastic litter which we put into a nearby waste bin (can't believe people walk by when a bin is so close at hand and they are going past washed up waste by their feet ). There were quite a few people on the beach that day and a lot of dog walkers but not one person that I saw picked a single piece of rubbish up; if it had been a £5 note I'm sure it wouldn't have remained on the beach for long ! . I thought media were getting the message through about ocean plastics.....but require more than a well done from folk (or quizzical looks we got in our case ! ) Although there are days set aside for "clean the beach" , there are not nearly enough of them to be honest. We live a little bit far away from the sea but try do our bit when we are visiting the coast. Even if folk picked up just one piece it would make such a difference; we didn't collect much that day as we would have been there for a week (and also the bin was too small and car parked too far away) but the orange netting barrier was such a terribly dangerous item to have by ocean and beach waiting for the next tide to take it out again. btw, I'm one of those folk who also pick up items off the shop floor and return them back to the rail or shelf after someone else has knocked them down and then walked on !!! I'm not quite OCD but I am generally tidy, as is Mike lol

We’ve noticed a small change in recovered plastics. There aren’t nearly so many cotton bud stems as there were a few years ago since a lot of the manufactures changed to rolled paper stems. There always seem to be lots of the plastic tubes off of aerosol cans (WD40 type things). Lots of fishing related plastics as well, not so much angling as commercial fishing stuff, nylon rope fragments, nylon type net materials. Still a lot of plastic drinking straws around but hopefully these will decrease with the bigger fast food chains changing to paper straws. Plastic bottles aplenty. The sad thing is that when you examine the shoreline really closely, there are innumerable small to micro plastic fragments everywhere. The product of long abandoned items broken down by wind and wave action due to becoming brittle with age. It’s quite disheartening I feel, but at least we can all attempt to do our bit and the waste material can possibly go for recycling (or more likely) landfill, which doesn’t really help the big issue as it's only being moved from once place to another, but at least gets some of it out of the food chain and marine environment. Huge issues which I’m afraid I don’t have the answers to. :-(

Peck-your-own!