Our research on plastic pollution

How do microplastics affect your soil and growing space? We worked with Coventry University’s Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience (CAWR) to find out how different plastics are used in vegetable plots, community gardens and allotments and determine ways of minimising further contamination.

Plastics in the garden

Worldwide plastic use is increasing rapidly and it can be easy for gardens and greenhouses to fill up with plastic products such as plant pots and modules, labels, mulches and polytunnel coverings.

But inevitably, these materials degrade to release microplastic fragments that may affect the functioning of soil life. Plastic particles are also brought into gardens as contaminants in composts and manures and are deposited from airborne dust and floodwater. Although awareness of this pollution is growing more research is needed to understand its significance.

Plastic pollution pilot project

We were given funding by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) for a six-month pilot project called: Co-creating Citizen Science for Reducing Plastic Contamination of Soil in Community Food Growing Spaces (REPAS).

The knowledge of the public was essential in helping us assess how they are used and people’s key concerns. In the future we would like to work further with gardeners and growers to co-develop methods of assessing plastics that are already in the soil and reduce further contamination.

This citizen science-centred research built on previous collaboration with CAWR, including the recent NERC-funded EDENS project.

We held workshops in Coventry, Norfolk, North Somerset, Shropshire, Cumbria and Leicestershire to gather people’s opinions and also carried out a survey on 243 people.
You can read more about the findings from these in the presentations from our workshops here:

Our findings

You can find out more about the research priorities here:

Proposed areas for future research

Read more about the damage done by garden plastics and how to reduce plastic use in your garden.