Part of the giant chain of bottle tops collected by hundreds of dedicated volunteers from Cornish beaches last winter will be in Strasbourg today in a bid to help toughen up EU legislation on waste and recycling.

The chain, which measures over 1.1km in length, is made up of more than 65,000 plastic bottle tops picked up from just some Cornish beaches over a three-month period. It was created to raise awareness about the harm being caused to our marine environment by plastic waste – and particularly disposable, single-use plastics.

Rame Peninsula Beach Care (RPBC www.ramepbc.org), a beach cleaning charity based in South East Cornwall which coordinated the creation and launch of the chain, has been invited by Clare Moody, Labour MEP for South West England and Gibraltar, to take part of the chain to Strasbourg today (March 8) to meet the EU’s circular economy commissioner Karmenu Vella and MEPs who will soon be debating measures on waste reduction in Europe.

Claire Wallerstein, from RPBC, said: ’We are delighted to have been asked to take the great Cornish bottle top chain to the heart of Europe, and we really hope it will have a big effect on European politicians by showing them the impact that our throwaway society is having on the marine environment – and also how much the people of Cornwall want to see firm action on this.

’We want European politicians to understand that marine litter is a major environmental threat not just on the other side of the world in the Pacific Garbage Patch, but right here in Europe and Cornwall.’

A coalition of more than 40 organisations and marine science experts from the South West, including the National Marine Aquarium, Cornwall Wildlife Trust, Visit Cornwall, Surfers Against Sewage, the South West Fish Producers Organisation and Truro Cathedral, are calling for the introduction of tougher recycling targets, and bottle deposit/ reverse vending schemes (which have already dramatically reduced plastic bottle waste in other countries).