On May 4th 2019 I release a Star Wars themed beach clean up video on both YouTube and Facebook.
In that video, I showcased a few scenes where the characters were “vaporizing” the micro-plastics on purpose. Aside from being able to experiment with special effects, I wanted to include the smaller pieces of trash in the video since they are just as important as the large ones.
The official definition of what is considered to be a microplastic is:
“Very small pieces of plastic that pollute the environment. Micro-plastics are not a specific kind of plastic, but rather any type of plastic fragment that is less than five millimeters in length according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.”
Here’s the crazy thing, you can’t really see 5 millimeters well with your naked eye. On this particular beach where I filmed the Star Wars themed beach clean up there is quite a bit of small pieces throughout the sand bed. So I can only imagine how many pieces of micro-plastics that there are within the sand as well.
I am a solutions focused type of person, so check this out! I came across this guy on Instagram fairly recently.
His name is Ray and he is doing something really cool! He has created a wheelbarrow device that can be used to remove micro plastics from the sand. Like the really, really small stuff. Here is his video where he explains how to works.
Although the micro plastics issue is huge, this is definitely a great start in the right direction. I am going to leave a link to his video where he explains how this works.
If you have a project that you are working on to help solve any conservation related issue please leave a link to it in the comments section below. I’d love to feature your project!