Plastic bottles take 100 years to break down; styrofoam cups – fifty years; aluminum cans – 200 years; glass bottles, which are made of silica, just like the beach’s white sand – who knows. So we took a little time out of our adventure trip to collect anthropogenic debris as we walked along the beach on Deer Island.
We picked up stuff on our way out, so we were able to enjoy the fruits of our labours on our walk back to the landing point.
Note
The degradation times for marine garbage can be found on the SOEST website, but That Danny has an interesting compilation of data that tries to reconcile the different degradation times you can find on the web.