At the end of last week Andy and Hugo left St Agnes for The Big Smoke in their tidy dinner jackets and boardies to collect an award for the Best Marine Project 2010. Three years ago SAS identified tiny plastic pellets known as mermaids tears, on beaches in abundance all over the UK and after tracing them back to their source, exposed the plastic factories as a source of this pollutant. Mermaids tears are the raw material from which plastic products are made and can be a persistent problem in the environment.

In June 09 Operation Clean Sweep was set up to reduce the amount of mermaids tears washing from the factories into the drains- which ultimately end up at sea. The little plastic drops can only be seen when you look, but once you recognise one you see them in their thousands laying in the sand¬†along the tide line. Once in the sea, they can increase in toxicity as they adsorb aqua-phobic chemicals, carcinogen’s and PCBs, that can bio accumulate (work their way up the food chain). SAS are also concerned that they look like fish eggs and have been mistaken for food by the bigger fish- which can wind up on our plate for dinner, so could effect not only the natural environment but also our health.

Anyway, congratulations to Surfers Against Sewage for another very sucessful campaign.