Abstract:

Most of the non-natural contamination is produced in dry land as a consequence of the human activities. However, marine ecosystems have been traditionally recognised as sinks of all kind of anthropogenic pollutants, since oceans interconnect the world and also cover most of the Earth’s surface. Massive scale plastic pollution was firstly reported in the decade of 1970 in Sargasso Sea surface, where mainly white plastic pellets ranging from 2.5 to 5 mm were widely detected. Around three decades later, in 2004, the microplastic (MP) term was coined and the ubiquity, prevalence through time, and bioaccumulation of these microscopic pollutants were stated. After 2014, other new forms of plastic pollution were described, and the scientific community started to echo concepts such as plastiglomerate, pyroplastic, plasticrust, anthropoquina or plastitar, among others. Due to their location between marine and terrestrial compartments, coastlines and beaches have been identified as sensitive environmental areas which can be used as outdoor laboratories to understand the scope, transport fluxes and fate of anthropogenic pollution.

During their last year in the university, Spanish students have to design, write and present publicly a Final Degree Project, which in degrees such as Chemistry and Environmental Sciences is normally performed as scientific experimental work. Final year students usually demand practical research works focused on real problems, such as the determination of plastic contaminants and the analysis of both organic and inorganic substances associated with them. In this communication we explain how an attractive project-based learning proposal about the identification and chemical analyses of pyroplastics in beaches was implemented aimed at these students at the University of La Laguna (Canary Islands, Spain). Though this science project gains a special importance in the context of the insularity and environmental fragility inherent to the Canary Islands, it is universal enough to be easily exportable to other coastal regions worldwide, and even to other anthropogenic pollutants anywhere.

Keywords:

Final Degree Project, undergraduate students, environmental degradation, plastic burning, marine pollution.