For more than 30 years bright orange 'Garfield' phones have been washing up on the French coast to the bemusement of local beach cleaners, who have finally cracked the mystery behind them.
Published Saturday, March 30, 2019 2:21PM EDTFor more than 30 years bright orange "Garfield" phones have been washing up on the French coast to the bemusement of local beach cleaners, who have finally cracked the mystery behind them.
But it wasn't until a local resident revealed that he had discovered the container after a storm in the 1980s that they were finally able to locate it -- wedged in a partially submerged cave only accessible at low tide. "Under the boulders in front of the entrance, we found 23 complete handsets with electronics and wires. They were everywhere," she added."We have no idea what happened at the time: we do not know where it came from, what boat," said Fabien Boileau, director of the Iroise Marine Nature Park in Finistere.
The world currently produces more than 300 million tonnes of plastics annually, and there are at least five trillion plastic pieces floating in our oceans, scientists have estimated.But lost shipping containers -- of which there were 1,390 in 2017, according to the World Shipping Council -- account for a small proportion of the pollution compared with the packaging industry.
Even animals living in the deepest ocean trenches have been found with fragments of plastic in their gut, according to new research published in February showing how the scourge reached into the bowels of the planet.
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