• With summer, the Pyrenees turn into a vast tourist area, with its share of consequences on the pollution of mountainous sites.

  • To make the general public aware of plastic waste in the mountains, a study suggests that any hiker can participate in geolocating plastic pollution with a simple click.

  • The objective of this vast study is to understand the plastic cycle in mountain areas, but also to improve waste management.

Bags stuck under stones or even cups at the bottom of a river.

These discoveries of abandoned plastics in the mountains are regularly made by hikers in the Pyrenees.

Waste that can sometimes be found years later.

French, Catalan and Andorran researchers have decided to look into the subject during a large study in which they have decided to involve the general public.

We launched # PLASTICØPYRSwitch a #citizenscience activity in @ plastic0_pyr


Clapping hands sign


Our goal: to raise public awareness about #plastics pollution in natural environments


More info here: https://t.co/NctsS1gNan

- Functional Ecology & Environment Laboratory (@FuncEcolEnv) May 26, 2021

Called Plasticopyr, "its objective is to understand the plastic cycle in mountain areas", explains Gaël Le Roux, CNRS research director at the Laboratory for functional ecology and environment in Toulouse.

His team had already demonstrated two years ago that it was raining microplastics on the Pyrenean massif, particles carried by the wind which pollute the soil.

Photo and geolocation

But there is also all the waste imported into remote areas by tourists and left behind, in particular last summer when new users decided to deconfin in the mountains, sometimes leaving traces of their passenger behind them. But they are not the only ones to forget their plastics on the spot. In the 1970s, mountain users tended to bury them under snow. This is how we recently found the waste left by soldiers on the Ossou glacier. There are also those that have been, and still are, used in agricultural landfills.

To see the impact of the passage of the Tour de France, the scientist carried out a sampling before his passage to the Tourmalet at the beginning of the week.

And he will do it again afterwards.

But difficult for this international team to be everywhere.

So to advance science, those in charge of the project decided to involve the general public.

"Thanks to the" Marine debris tracker "application, initially developed for plastic pollution of the oceans, any user of the mountain can take a photo of the waste he is going to collect, he will geolocate it and indicate what it is.

It takes three seconds and for us, it will allow us to have an idea in real time of the dispersion of the plastic and the preferred areas where they are found, ”continues Gaël Le Roux.

Microplastic is really not fantastic

All this data can be analyzed and submitted to local decision-makers to better manage waste collection areas.

Or offer, like Andorra, recurring cleaning activities after the seasons in the most polluted places.

Like the roadsides which are littered with bottles and other PET waste.

Even if in the mountains they will disintegrate more quickly thanks to the high variability of temperatures, rain and UV rays, once they are in the form of microclastic, they also do not vanish in nature, but remain present.

“So that's not necessarily good news, it's harder to pick them up.

It is therefore easier to manage large plastics, ”notes the scientist.

So on your phones, get set, pick it up!

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