Many schools don’t consider it safe for students to be picking up litter on beaches. The students in this photo are measuring the amount of litter without the need to touch it. You can find more information about the technique in the curriculum materials. This is what the students are doing to measure beach pollution:

• They have found a location where the high tide has left the seaweed along with the litter.
• Students have used a four metre circle of string and four stakes to make a square one metre quadrat on the beach.
• They have picked through the seaweed and other material inside the one metre square quadrat with a plastic ruler to find all the litter
• The students recorded the litter found on their data sheets.
• If they find anything harmful, they will inform their teacher who will remove it.