Angela - Cataloging Plastic

After finishing sampling the east coast on my quest for plastic on Florida's beaches, I started cataloging the plastic from one of my 2-quart jars. After further inspection I've decided to classify the fragments based on size (yes, I measure every single piece), color, type (e.g. "bottle cap"), and further divided them into the following three categories: 

"Ocean Plastic"

"Ocean Plastic

- "Ocean Plastic" = any plastic that has spent time out in the water, identified via biogenous material deposits

- "Visitor Plastic" = items along high tide line but have no biogenous material on them, no scratches, and the color has not faded. During my sampling I've noticed people actually setting up camp along the high tide line, thus not everything I found can be considered "ocean plastic".

"Unsure"

- "Unsure" = if someone can come up with a better name I would highly appreciate any suggestions. Pieces in this category are plastic fragments that are scratched up and have been bleached by the sun, but have no biogenous material growing on them. 

 

After dividing the plastic into the three categories I planned to weigh each with a super modern balance I picked up at a thrift shop.  It took about 15 minutes to calibrate the thing and after weighing a test item it had to be calibrated again. I now own a paper weight that looks like a balance. 

 

I decided to invest in an inexpensive portable scale that measures up to 200g within two decimal places. To my surprise, after receiving it in the mail, when they say "portable" they really mean portable. Tomorrow I plan on making a tiny tray out of aluminum foil and hope to finally weigh my plastic. If the aluminum foil tray method doesn't work, I will try to acquire the small white paper bags used by pharmacies, but that may contaminate the ocean plastic samples I had planned to give to NASA, so keeping my fingers crossed that the first method works.