Environmental activists and litter pickers have suggested that a ‘throw away society’ is to blame for a lot of the microplastics washing up on Weymouth Beach.
Other beach cleaners have also noticed the problem, which also affects other parts of the Dorset coast.
Dave Taylor, Co-Founder of Weymouth and Portland Marine Litter Project, believes that ‘we need to try and tackle to problem with microplastics and nurdles at the source.’
This is a thought shared by Mr Hallworth and Roy Beal, founder of Clean Jurassic Coast who headed down to Weymouth beach with a specialist nurdle vacuum last week following reports of the problem.
The Marine Litter Project is based in Wyke Regis and is a community interest company founded by local environmentalists Jane Fuhrmann and Mr Taylor.
The organisation's main objective is to create community-based projects aimed at reducing the pollution from litter in our seas and on our beaches.
Originating from a beach cleaning background, Jane and Dave soon became aware more action was required than just beach cleaning and sending the waste to be incinerated or dumped in landfill.
Mr Taylor said: “There are hundreds of bits of broken plastics washing up, it comes from things like plastic beach toys and buckets and spades which get left on the beach and then get washed out to sea and come back all broken up.
“I think things are getting worse, especially when people come down, buy plastic buckets and spades and then leave them on the beach, as well as crabbing gear.
“We have bins around the harbour where people can dispose of their crabbing gear and other ones for fishing lines which we then recycle.”
He added: “I have a wheelie bin full of inflatables that people have left on the beach.”
Mr Hallworth has also noticed a lot more ‘plastic, toys and Styrofoam’ washing up on Weymouth beaches when out on his litter picks with dog May, believing the numbers to be in the ‘millions.’
All three environmentalists believe that education and prevention is the way forward.
Mr Taylor said: “We didn’t want to be a beach cleaning group because it’s like Groundhog Day and because there’s not many people doing this, we need to look at the bigger picture.
“Most of the micro plastics on Weymouth Beach are from the summer as a lot of the rubbish gets left and on a small scale, there’s not a lot that people in Weymouth can do about nurdles, but in a perfect world where all the litter had gone, then we could tackle the nurdles.
“We try and stop things happening in the first place. We need to try and tackle the problem at the source.”
Nurdles are by definition a microplastic because they are less than 5mm in size and are melted down and made into many plastic items, from clothes to cars, food wrappers to artificial Christmas trees.
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