A mum’s beach clean video has gone viral after she filmed herself using a clever hack to collect huge piles of plastic nurdles from the coast.
Jo Blake, 31, a child minder, regularly cleans beaches with her two children, seven-year-old Zachary and Lily, five, and noticed they were covered in tiny plastic pellets known as nurdles.
One day she saw someone collecting nurdles with a dust pan and brush and gave the technique a go, and was amazed at how efficient it was.
She then filmed herself doing it and shared it online, and to her astonishment, the video was viewed more than 70,000 times around the world.
To collect micro plastics, Jo takes a dustpan and brush and gently brushes the sand at the high water mark into the pan.
She then pours the collected sand into a bucket of water, causing the sand to sink to the bottom which leaves the nurdles floating on top.
She then scoops out the nurdles and pours the clean sand back onto the beach.
Jo openly admits she didn’t invent the technique, but hopes that others watching the video will give it a go.
Jo, from Porthtowan, Cornwall, said: “I was shocked, I just shared it to one of my friends [on Facebook] and it has literally just gone from my page, been shared around and watched thousands of times – it’s great because it’s helping to raise awareness.
“You take a dustpan and brush, go to the high tide line and sweep us any patches of nurdles that you see, it doesn’t matter if you get the sand in as well.
“Then you take that and pour it into a bucket of water – the sand sinks and the nurdles float to the top so that they are instantly separated.
“Then you can scoop out and get rid of the plastic waste and put the clean sand back on the beach.
“I didn’t invent it, I saw someone else doing it on the beach and I thought it was a great idea.”
The trick helps to quickly collect numerous micro-plastics easily.
Jo and her two children use the method each time they complete a beach clean to get rid of as much plastic as possible.
“It’s become second nature to them,” she added.
“They love it because they know that they are doing something to help, and they love finding all these different objects.
“Now when they walk down the street they’ll stop and pick up people’s rubbish.”
With the recent storms churning up even more plastic pollution and dumping it on our shores, Jo hopes the video will encourage more people to join the fight against plastic.
She said: “There has been a lot more plastic on the beaches since the storm.
“My dad has lived in Cornwall his whole life and he was shocked when I showed him.
“The video is helping to raise awareness of the problem, hopefully the more people that see it, the more people will get involved.
“Anytime you’re at the beach try to do a beach clean, even if it’s five minutes, every little helps.”
