Back in January the Environment Agency announced a new team to tackle plastic pollution in the South West. This approach seems to have been extended a further step by enabling EA staff to record plastics for all of the 400 beaches they check for bathing waters. For a long time it has been left to NGOs to record the level of beach pollution. Recently in a news item covered by the BBC it seems as if the EA will start to monitor beach plastics.

BBC ‘More than 400 beaches will be checked weekly in a bid to tackle the “scourge” of discarded plastic, the Environment Agency (EA) has said. The new unit will log data from water sampling teams around England about the amount and type of plastic found. It hopes to identify the worst-hit beaches and use its findings to better regulate the problem. More than eight million tonnes of plastic enters the world’s oceans each year. The damage to marine wildlife was highlighted on the BBC’s Blue Planet II, which helped to provoke a range of measures from the government and community groups.’

Click here to reference   Has anyone seen the EA source?