Monopoly houses, toy soldiers and Lego: the museum of plastic lost at sea

The waste washing up on British beaches is a shocking but fascinating catalogue of our timesTracey Williams has been a beachcomber for most of her life. It started with school holidays to north Cornwall in the 1960s, searching for shells, sea glass and mermaids' purses among the rocks and sand. In the 1980s, after her parents moved to a 300-year-old clifftop house in Bigbury-on-Sea, in south Devon, Williams and her father would seek out fossils in their back garden and down by the shore."But I'd also find old bottles, figurines, medieval rings, and bring them in, clean them up," she says. "You know, chance finds." Then, 23 years ago, everything changed. "I started finding Lego pieces washed up on the shore," she explains. "Flippers, scuba tanks, the occasional dragon or octopus. By that time I had two young children, and we could take buckets down to the beach and just fill them with the amount of Lego coming in." Continue reading...