Plastic waste, scourge of European beaches – Le Figaro

The Surfrider NGOs conducted thorough collection of rubbish on five coasts of Brittany and the Basque Country. About 80% of waste plastic material that puts several hundred years before disappearing.

The oceans, sick of human activity ? The finding is not new but the method, it is innovative. The Surfrider NGOs details in a report released Tuesday the composition of 8 million tons of waste that pollute beaches, coastlines, oceans and seabed every day. “80% of the pollution that affects our seas is from land and end of human activity, with terrible consequences for biodiversity and our entire environment,” says President of Surfrider Foundation Europe, Gilles Asenjo, in a statement.

The method used by the NGO can accurately identify the waste. In 2015, five sites in Brittany and the Basque Country, on the Atlantic coast, hundreds of volunteers collected more than 100,000 to classify waste so as to collect data at European level. The result is clear: the plastic is “over 80%” of waste on most of the five sites analyzed, except on the beach in Zumaia Inpernupe where almost half of the waste is glass. As recalled Gilles Asenjo, unlike wood or cardboard, “plastics take several hundreds of years before disappearing.” These plastic waste also have consequences for marine biodiversity and are ultimately a danger to humans.

When waste is recognizable, volunteers were able to identify the objects abandoned by walkers. Found cigarette butts, plastic fragments, plastic bags, pieces of polystyrene, cottons stems, bottle caps, broken glass, ropes and nets and glass and plastic bottles. Other more unusual objects such as tires, bikes, fire extinguishers or a football.

Made four times in January 2015, April, June and September the collection of waste on the beach of La Barre, in Anglet (Pyrénées-Orientales) allowed for example to extract 10,884 detritus littoral. In these extracts objects, no less than 94.5% are plastic. Some are not identifiable, but others have different forms to classify. Surfrider compiled them in a top10:

The NGO says that the presence of building products plants, concrete producers and activities fishing along the Adour may explain the strong presence of polystyrene in the waste.