Microplastic on Cyprus beaches

 

To find out about Microplastics on Cyprus beaches, we had a zoom meeting with Maria-Christina, Chemical Engineer, AKTI.

   

The purpose of their research is to mainly understand the current situation of microplastics on Cyprus beaches, how many microplastics are in Cyprus beaches and what type of microplastics we find in Cyprus beaches. So far wo series of samplings were carried out in 10 remote and touristic beaches of Cyprus. Their goal is to highlight this problem so that measures can be taken.

Mrs. Maria-Christina explained us that Microplastic have a size from 5mm – 1μm, that can be found on beaches and the sea all over the world. They come from different sources like clothes, cosmetics, plastic bottles and like we said at the beginning of our presentation, there are two categories of microplastic, primary and secondary. On the other hand, microplastic are less than < 1µm in size and come from microplastic that are broken into smaller pieces

Mrs. Maria-Christina showed us some examples of microplastics they commonly find on Cyprus beaches. On your left, the above picture shows a plastic fiber under a microscope and below a fragment of plastic compared to the head of a needle. On your side you can see again a microplastic fiber.

These are some more pictures of microplastic found on Cyprus beaches

The procedure involves collecting samples 4 times every 3 months, from 10 beaches all over Cyprus. They separate the microplastics by flotation and then they count them one by one.  At the end they use microscopes to recognize the type of microplastic. Their survey has found that there are up to 4000 microplastics per square on the coasts of Cyprus.