Since 2013, we’ve worked with University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension and New Hampshire Sea Grant to study microplastics on New Hampshire beaches. Microplastics are defined as plastics between 1-5mm in size. They can include fragments of larger plastics such as bottles, films from straw wrappers, pieces of foam, and filaments of rope or synthetic fibers.
Our study involves collecting sand samples at several New Hampshire beaches from Rye to Seabrook, sieving them for plastics, and sorting them into various categories. We’ve learned that besides the large plastics on our beaches, there are small ones, too, with foams making up the most significant percentage of microplastics across the beaches.
Explore Microplastics Data
View our interactive dashboard to check out our microplastics data!
This work was funded in part by Howell Conservation Fund
