Harmful Plastics are affecting life in our seas

Harmful Plastics are affecting life in our seas and groups, from around Cornwall, have been working hard to bring this to the attention of local and national politicians to take action before it is too late.

Over the past four months volunteers from The Friends of Portheras Cove and St Just Primary School have joined forces with many other Cornish beach cleaning and environmental groups. They have been collecting plastic bottle tops washed up on local beaches. Locally 3,117 have been collected so far!

A giant chain, which already measures over 500m and contains tens of thousands of tops, is being made.

There will be unveiling the chain at 1.30pm on April 11, 2015 Tregonhawke Beach, Whitsand Bay, PL10 1JX and the campaigners would like as many people as possible to attend to show the strength of local feeling that the growing scale of the marine litter crisis needs urgent and radical action.

In Cornwall, more than 250 seals have been observed with plastic entangled around their necks. Further, every dead northern fulmar from the English Channel area has had plastic found in its gut. The United Nations estimates that over one million seabirds and 100,000 whales, dolphins, seals and turtles worldwide are now killed by marine plastic each year.  It is widely ingested by hundreds of species, including commercially-caught fish and zooplankton, the foundation of the marine food chain. Most of the plastic starts off on the land as litter or rubbish that gets lost in the waste collection/ management process.

Cllr Sue James intends to attend this event to see and hear about the problem first hand. If you can join her then let the organisers know by emailing  claire.wallerstein@gmail.com .