news blog

In March 2016, two BPA volunteers in the suburb of Port Melbourne in Melbourne, started surveying the plastic that washed ashore every day on a specific beach. They selected one beach in PM and repeated the survey of what had washed in on the tide line every morning.  Over 1200 sampling intervals.  The purpose was to identify the top or most common item types that were washing out of the bay.  The second goal was to use the data and develop a model that would allow the extrapolation of how many plastic pieces were washing out of the whole bay perimeter every year. 
Their results show the high seasonal variation of plastic washing out of the Bay.  Primarily driven by wind direction.   This showed that sampling has to be very frequent to avoid any deviant days and capture a true cross section of what is out there.
The data also showed there was effectively no decline in plasrtic rubbish washing ashore over that 5 years.