Collection Report April 25, 2011

Back stateside after a great week in England. And slowly getting back into the flotsam frame of mind. At long last, the collection report from April 25.

9:50 AM, 2 hrs past high-tide; drizzly

For the first time in weeks, the beach held a visible kelp line -- finally things were making it back in to Saco Bay from the wider Gulf of Maine. (And of course, where there's kelp, there's plastic.) Then again, it wasn't really surprising that kelp had returned. I mean, when you stroll a familiar beach and find this washed up:

21+ feet of ancient tree brought in by a recent tide

...you know it's been an interesting week. How interesting? Well, let's see. First, Zone N:

105 finds:

• Building materials: 16 (10 chunks of asphalt, fence slat, 3 wood offcuts, brick, tile)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 25 (all kinds)
• Fishing misc.: 17 (lobster trap bumper, shotgun shell wadding, 2 trap coatings, 2 trap scraps, 5 claw bands, 4 bits of rope, 2 bait bags)
• Food-related plastics: 6 (Capri Sun + straw wrapper, straw, Mondavi wine label scrap, "Simplify" Advanced H2O water bottle, Blue Diamond hickory-smoked almonds wrapper)
• Food-related metal/glass: 5 (can, scrap, glass mouth fragment, unID'd metal scrap, toothpaste tube)
• Non-food/unknown plastics: 26 (5 baggies/wrappers, 8 string/ribbon/tiestring, twisted coil, black tape, 5 scraps > 1", 6 scraps < 1")
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 8
• Paper/wood: 1 (note)
• Misc./unique: 1 (string)

On Sunday, April 1417, there had been some surfing event that had filled the main parking lot & half the overflow. Given human nature, clearly some of the above comes from those beach-goers. (The food packs, cigarettes, probably some of that explosion of styrofoam.) Still, some stuff clearly wasn't the result of local litter.

Decaying aluminum toothpaste tube

It's hard to see a scenario where someone has chucked a tube of toothpaste out at the beach -- or out a car window into a gulley. There's surely a more interesting story behind this bizarre find. Much as there is with many of the pieces of debris that I find washed in. Careless & malicious littering are part of the story. They are not the whole story.

The bad news: Toothpaste tubes are one of the latest casualties of the "Make Everything Plastic" campaign. This aluminum tube is returning to the dust from which it came. 2011's varieties won't ever do that. As more of our world becomes plastic, more of it will persist when it gets lost to the environment. That's our future. Our present.

On to Zone S:

54 finds:

• Building materials: 17 (14 asphalt chunks, 2 brick, shingle)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 10 (inc. obvious bits from Zone N)
• Fishing misc.: 4 (2 trap bumpers, 2 trap coatings)
• Food-related plastics: 3 (straw, cup, cap seal)
• Food-related metal/glass: 3 (can scraps -- one freshly torn)
• Non-food/unknown plastics: 13 (2 bag scraps, 2 string bits, 1 tiedown, golf ball, pushpin head, melted cup, 1 scrap > 1", 4 scraps, < 1")
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 3
• Paper/wood: 0
• Misc./unique: 1 (cloth rope)

Little of note here, except a nice window into how styrofoam blows down a beach.

So after a few weeks of calm, the storm returns. 159 more pieces of manmade junk, from a quiet beach in Maine.

A parting photo for this week, from Zone N:

!

I will always wonder just what on earth this means.

Soda Can Experiment - Postmortem

Longer-time readers here may remember an experiment I started back in May with soda cans. When I started my beach walks, I came across lots of badly mangled aluminum.

Like these

It occurred to me: If learning about the things that persist is important, so is learning how & why some things don't persist. After all, the Internet is flooded with sites claiming that an aluminum can will last for 80 to 200 years (or more). Which is not what I've been seeing.

Circa 1810? Anyone buying that?

So in late May I started an experiment to see what breaks an aluminum can down. I tried 3 cans: one in a bucket of seawater, one with iron nails added (to test for a galvanic reaction), and one I had scoured with sandpaper. At first, the scoured can corroded a little. But that soon stabilized. By mid-July, the experiment was pretty much DOA. (Feel free to catch up on all the details here, here, here, and here.) I've only just now finally emptied the buckets and officially killed the test.

Can #2 today, caked in salt, otherwise pristine

But I learned something. You see, aluminum is funny. It oxidizes easily. But that layer of oxidation actually protects the fresh aluminum underneath. It's like an impermeable film. For a can to corrode away, something needs to keep rubbing off that film. No rubbing of film, no corrosion. No corrosion, and boom, you've got a can that lasts for decades -- or centuries.

But take a can and place it at, say, the beach. Well, gee, what do we have at the beach that's abrasive and can rub off an outer protective film layer repeatedly? (This is a rhetorical question: there are no points for answering.)

So the future task is clear: toss a can into a bag of sand, shake it vigorously once a day, then let it spend the rest of its time in a bucket of seawater. And see what happens.

In the meantime, a last tidbit. In 2008, Americans recycled 53.2 billion cans. But they consumed 98.3 billion cans. Say only 1% of the 45.1 billion non-recycled cans got littered and found their way into the sea. That's 451 million cans added to the sea floor. Each year. And that's only from the U.S.

So maybe this year, a partier tossed a beer can into the ocean. From there, maybe it settled down to the bottom in a nice little nook. Where it lay, and lay. Then maybe in late 2209 a large storm will wash up that ancient soda can onto the beach. And maybe in the summer of 2210, your great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter will wander the beach and step down on a sharp, jagged bit of that can, as it finally rots away.

Linked from www.marinelifephotography.com/
enviro/marine-debris.htm