. ..as plastic menace chokes the Thames

PILED up on the foreshore, the plastic bottles, broken containers and assorted junk are testament to our throwaway culture. Clear-up volunteers say the Thames estuary is choked with so much rubbish that they are unable to keep it under control.

It puts at risk the feeding-grounds of rare birdlife and marine animals – the RSPB says the estuary is one of the UK’s most internationally important water- bird sites. Other animals seen in the tidal reaches of the river include harbour seals, grey seals, harbour porpoises and even bottlenose dolphins.

But a study by the charity Thames 21 found in 2016 that about 59 per cent of the foreshore was tainted by minute particles of plastic.

Researchers collected data all the way from Teddington in west London to the sea. They picked up 35,000 particle samples, saying the results were evidence of ‘a global microplastics crisis’.

Last month volunteers with the Thames River Watch scheme collected over 4,000 single-use plastic bottles during a three hour litter-pick on the banks of the river in Rainham, east London.

The shocking haul was even larger than the group’s previous record, when its helpers fished out 1,300 bottles in the Thamesmead area. Up to 27,000 tons of plastic are dumped in the seas around Britain every year. Worldwide, the total is thought to be 13million tons. Once in the oceans plastic can take hundreds of years to degrade.

It slowly breaks down into smaller and smaller microplastics, which can be consumed by marine animals and find their way into the human food chain.