Beach plastic - the waste found on local coast lines

A few months ago, Lil Vischer, an artist from East Lothian embarked on a challenge to pick up as much plastic as she could from a small stretch of coastline down at Longniddry bents in order to clean and protect the area as well as raise awareness on the sheer amount of plastic that pollutes our coastlines. A plan was formed to visit the same spot as often as she could and pick up, photograph, and sort all that she could find. 100 visits to the beach later, she has accumulated over 26,000 pieces of plastic waste which she recently displayed at the Seabird Centre in North Berwick.

Lil's project began with a single bag of litter she picked up at Gullane Beach in an effort to clean the local beaches that she loves.

“The more I looked at this bag, the more I started to feel that I wanted people to see what I found because it was so shocking to me. I thought, I wonder if there's any way that I could collect a bit more and lay it out in a way that is visually striking? I didn't want it to be artwork. It's not an art thing i'm doing, its visual data”.

This picture is just one example of a plastic pick laid out in a visual way.

Over the course of this project, Lil found a huge array of plastic waste, some expected, and

some surprising. The waste found on this small stretch of beach (around 900 m2 of Longniddry Bents) came from all over. From careless littering, to fly tipping, to waste from landfills, the plastic that covers our beaches is a huge problem that must be tackled from all directions.

You can follow Lil's art account on Instagram here and here and keep up with her work here.