Vent: found out 78% of beach trash is microplastics, not bottles

I was logging my haul last week and a volunteer from a research group showed me their data. We pick up tons of visible junk, but the real issue is the tiny stuff you can't see. They found over 4,000 microplastic pieces in one square meter of sand near the tide line. My cleanup crew was celebrating 500 straws and bottle caps, but that's nothing compared to what stays behind. Has anyone else's group started tackling microplastics, or are we all just fooling ourselves with the big stuff?

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the_lisa1mo ago

Asked my buddy who runs a beach cleanup in Florida about this. He said they switched to sifting sand with fine mesh screens and found so much plastic dust it made them want to quit. Now they track the big stuff for volunteers but quietly log the micro stuff on separate sheets so nobody feels useless.

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