A 47 year-old washing-up bottle has been washed up on Brean beach in a startling example of how plastics can take years to decay in the sea.
Brean beach warden Dave Furber came across the Fairy bottle on the tideline during last week’s high tides, as pictured here.
“I’ve never seen anything this old washed up before,” he told Burnham-On-Sea.com.
“The wording on the bottle has been weathered, but you can still clearly read that it says ‘4d off’ on the front, so it must date back to before decimalisation, which was in 1971.”
“That makes the bottle over 47 years old which is remarkable. It shows how plastics are so slow to decay.”
The bottle was found among clumps of seaweed washed up along the beach, near to Brean Down.
Several beach clean groups exist in our area to remove plastic debris. Litter Free Coast Somerset organises regular beach cleans in Burnham and Berrow to renove plastics and other man-made debris along our coastline.
