WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

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- This isn't the story I expected to tell.

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I knew, coming here, that this
isn't some magic beach

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where you can bring a shovel and
scoop up buckets and buckets of Lego.

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It might've felt a bit like that
twenty years ago,

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but these days Lego is
a little harder to find.

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But yes, here on the coast of Cornwall,
in the south-west of England,

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when the conditions are right,

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you might find quite a bit of Lego
scattered on Perranporth beach.

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In 1997, a container ship
called Tokio Express

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was on its way to New York
when it got hit by a heavy storm 

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off Land's End,
just west of here.

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A load of containers got
knocked into the sea.

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And one of them contained almost 5 million
little plastic pieces of Lego.

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Most of which were ocean themed.

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Flippers, spears, octopuses,

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all crashing around in
the waves and currents.

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The far end of this beach
has the right conditions.

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There's a huge expanse of sand,

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the wind is in the right direction,

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but the pieces can wash up anywhere.

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That's the nice, cute story
that I was going to tell.

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- We find the Lego after high spring tides
and winter storms.

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And that's when the waves
will eat into the dunes

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and release a lot of the plastic that's
been washed ashore many years ago.

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- That's Tracey Williams.

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She's been beachcombing here for years

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and runs a photography project
called Lego Lost at Sea.

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Tracey didn't want to be on camera,

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which is frankly sensible.

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But she was nice enough to show off
some of her Lego collection,

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to take me beachcombing here
on the far end of the beach,

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and to chat about what
she's found over the years.

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So I got my GoPro ready.
We went out for a walk on the shore.

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And that's where the story I
thought I was going to tell

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didn't work anymore.

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When you've got it in a little jar

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[Tracy laughs]

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with all the bright colours,
it looks almost quaint.

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And then the reality is a bit different.

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- No, the reality is horrifying, isn't it?

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So if you look here, see.

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- Absolutely full.

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- So this is actually a plastic pebble.

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- Plastic?
- Yeah.

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- How can you tell the difference?
- Feel the weight.

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- Oh, huh!

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- Nobody really knows
where they're coming from,

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but they're thought to be the
remains of beach bonfires.

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So I've actually picked
up 20,000 of those.

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It's actually from an ale cask.

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These are from packaging strips.

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These are what they put round cartons
to protect them from packaging.

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Shotgun wads, shotgun cartridges.
Bottle caps.

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- I mean, what do you do with...

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like, you've just got to bring a
trash bag and just...

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- Yeah, so I normally come
down armed with sacks.

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That's a glow stick from fishing.

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So that's the valve off a tyre.
- Oh yeah!

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- So these get discarded on
garage forecourts and tyre places,

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and they just get washed into the drains.
- And the drains go straight to the sea.

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- A lot will be litter dropped
on the streets.

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80% of litter dropped on the streets

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is said to make its way to the sea.
- Wow.

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It's not just Lego,
that's the way people like to tell it

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but it's not just Lego.

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It's so many plastic things
and it's not just this beach.

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Once you start looking...
immediately, bright white,

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bright blue, bright yellow.
- Yeah.

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- If I was looking at
this from a distance,

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I would have just read it all as seaweed.

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- It's actually not as bad today,

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as it sometimes is,

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but I can't see how it's
ever going to get better

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in a way it's a sort
of pointless exercise,

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constantly picking it up.

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- I've just got a sort-of
creeping horror at this point.

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Do you get used to that?

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- Get used to seeing
this amount of plastic?

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- Yeah.
- That's bleak.

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- There's this cliché in horror movies,

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where the characters suddenly realise
that the monster that they've heard about,

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this abstract thing, is actually

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in the room with them and has
been there the whole time,

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and that's kind of what this felt like,

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because I've been going to
beaches like this all my life

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and I'd never noticed the bright colours
that were right in front of me.

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- So on this beach,
you get a lot of the floating plastic.

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So you've got all the
fragments of plastic.

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You got the nurdles,
these little tiny nurdles.

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- Those aren't stones? Those are...

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- No, these are little plastic nurdles.

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These are the raw material
that all plastic items are made from.

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There's billions of them.

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So some are nurdles.

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You also get ones that
are black and ridged

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and they're actually
biobeads that are used

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in waste-water treatment plants.

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- And then you sort-of pull back the camera
and you realise that it's all of this.

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There's so much of it.

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- On some beaches, you get the plastic
that sinks to the ocean floor

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and it washes ashore with the kelp,
with the brown seaweed.

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They've probably been
swirling around the seabed

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for the last 24 years,

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and every now and again they
wash ashore with the seaweed.

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- And this goes down, then?

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- We assume it does.

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- So a lot of it is is buried under where
we are now. Just needs to come out.

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- Quite a lot of the toys we find,
you can date them.

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And some date back to the 50s and 60s.

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Especially the cereal packet toys.

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We recently did some
experiments in the lab

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to see how long Lego would last
in the marine or coastal environments,

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and the scientists that did
the experiments worked out

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that it could last up to 1300 years.

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I wonder if one day you'll just be able
to recognise it by the colour.

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- Yeah.
- That's bleak.

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- Bright green of the seaweed
or the yellow of the lifeboats.

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Ah, look, treasure!

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- Treasure? Is that one of
the dwarves from Snow White?

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It's not every beach,
but it's a lot of them.

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Tucked away in corners
where the tourists don't go

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or just in plain sight.

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There was seaweed on another
beach filled with plastic.

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Once you see it...!

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- I've just seen a Lego broom.

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- Yes. Just there?

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- Yes.

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- What do you know? Thank you.

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Among all the other plastic waste,
there still is Lego washing up.

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Did they used to be more Lego?
Has it changed over the years?

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- Yes. I think there's definitely less
Lego than there used to be.

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And there's lots of people
looking out for it now.

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You only ever see what floats really.

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You never really hear about
all the items from cargo spills

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that sink to the bottom of the sea.

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- Because the rest of it is going to be out
on the ocean floor somewhere.

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- Yeah.
- That's bleak.

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[both laugh]

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I don't have a neat ending for the story.

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I was going to say, "Oh, if you're
on the beach in south-west England,

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!it's worth keeping your
eyes down from time to time.

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"Maybe you'll see some Lego!"

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But even if you don't,

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maybe take a bag with you
and take some plastic away,

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because there's a lot of it.

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The Lego Lost at Sea project is on
Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook,

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and there's also a link
to pre-order Tracey's book

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down in the description.

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[chuckles]

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If I looked slightly distracted during that

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it's because halfway through
I realised that there is

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green nylon rope just in the seaweed,

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just hanging out there.