Over Christmas we made a tree from plastic we found on the beach at Strangles in North Cornwall and since then I have been taking photos of plastic on beaches around the world. So far not surprisingly Antarctica had the cleanest beaches. I didn't find any plastic washed up there amongst the penguins. However, if you look inside Antarctic birds they have plastic inside them
Here is a link which makes sobering reading. As Hardesty and Wilcox say in their Conversation article "the ubiquity, volume, and permanence of plastic waste demands better solutions" Eight million tonnes of plastic are going into the ocean each year
To watch our Christmas tree video again
Punta Arenas at the very base of South America had quite a lot. Here is the beach at Punta Arenas with plastic, sea birds and ships.
Even beautiful Jervis Bay on the New South Wales Coast and a National Park is not immune, with blue plastic bottle tops and coffee spoons. This might be the Anthropocene but do we really want to be remembered for our plastic rubbish?
Senior Professor at University of Wollongong
