One Time Use Plastic-Research in UK

 Hey All-

Hope everyone's week is going well! This week has felt super busy but I'm heading to San Diego for an extended weekend so I'm excited to get out of town for a few days. I'm also excited to take my research with me to the ocean. I plan on going to the beach and selecting an area to collect trash and document my findings. My guess is that it will be mostly one time use plastics. In my research so far, most of the trash collected has been plastics. 

I found an article written about plastic pollution in freshwater rivers in the UK. The article references the types of plastic pollution found : "These top ten plastic items represented 42% of all litter identified in freshwater environments: five plastic items were food related (food wrappers, straws/stirrers/cutlery, bottles and lids, takeaway containers, and cups), two were sanitary/cosmetic (cotton bud sticks and sanitary towels), and two were smoking related (cigarette butts and smoking-related packaging); the other item type was plastic bags." (Marazzi, Loiselle, Anderson, Rocliffe, & Winton). This information is helpful in getting an idea of what others are finding during their research. 

Source: Marazzi, L., Loiselle, S., Anderson, L., Rocliffe, S., & Winton, D. (n.d.). Consumer-based actions to reduce plastic pollution in rivers: A multi-criteria decision analysis approach. Retrieved April 16, 2021, from https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0236410