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Just back from another beach clean event, this one at Chessel Bay Nature Reserve, #Southampton. Thread... 
At first sight, things look petty good. But start looking among and under vegetation and it's obvious that #plasticpollution is an issue. Lots of macro-litter, way more than can be collected in a single day..
Doesn't take long to collect a big bag of plastic crap. Only two syringes this time. The plastic fish are soy sauce containers. #plasticpollution
And, yet again, #polystyrene is one of the biggest problems. Its millions of small fragments are too tiny to collect by hand, I always end up giving up. Some of it is decades old. #plasticpollution
Examine the sediment, and it's partly formed of millions of plastic nurdles. No person could ever collect these. We have lost the battle. It breaks my heart that we have dumped so much plastic that we have changed the composition of what used to be wild spaces. #plasticpollution
The final haul - assembled by a group organised by The Hawthorns and their friends and allies - is collected by Southampton City Council. One of the councillors was on site, but I didn't know until afterwards. I wish I had because...
#Southampton is utterly useless on the minimising of plastic waste. No recycling, no collecting of plastic by the council at all, no push to reduce the quantity of disposable plastic that people produce. Apparently its not cost effective, so everything just goes to landfill.
I will finish by mentioning the remarkable super-abundant tiny #gastropod Hydrobia, still findable at Chessel Bay in good numbers. I hope this remains the case for the future. #molluscs
