“I found a message in a bottle!”

These are the words every beachcomber hopes to one day yell, and this exclamation came from Ros Evans, sending a ripple of excitement through others in her group.

They weren’t hunting coins or treasures, but are members of Warrnambool’s Beach Patrol 3280 who spend hours each week picking up rubbish along the coastline.

The letter was inside a plastic drink bottle and contained the sweet notions of a child, written in the careful handwriting of someone who had just got their pen license. 

It read: “My name is Ines Zapcan, I am 8 years old, whoever finds this bottle will have good luck for life from me and my family”.

Ms Evans managed to track down Ms Zapcan and discovered that she was now 18 years old and living in Melbourne north-west. The letter elicited feelings of nostalgia and remorse.

Ten years ago, Ines Zepcan and her sister had been holidaying in nearby Portland when the children decided to both send a message in a bottle out to sea. 

“I sent that bottle off a pier in Portland, Victoria, exactly 10 years ago,” Ms Zepcan said.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t send a million pounds along with the message, but I’m so glad you guys reached out, it has really brought back a lot of memories for me and my family.”

Remarkably, after 10 years of being tossed and tumbled along the aptly named Shipwreck Coast, the plastic bottle was battered but still watertight and intact.

“Probably not the most environmentally friendly choice made by my eight-year-old self,” Ms Zepcan said. 

“I think I might have some cleaning up to do.”

Three minutes of use, 450 years on Earth

By finding Ines Zepcan, the Warrnambool clean-up crew have been able to date the bottle and now even know its starting location. 

This bottle travelled at least 80km from Portland to Warrnambool, floating in the ocean for more than 10 years.

This is a great piece of data illuminating the longevity and impact of this and all plastic bottles in the ocean and it couldn’t be ignored by the leader of the Beach Patrol 3280 group, award-winning environmental warrior Colleen Hughson.

Ms Hughson not only orchestrates community rubbish clean-up crews, she documents every microplastic and fishnet they’ve ever collected and records product information and likely origin — if she can find it.

“This bottle tells us that plastic bottles last a long time in the environment,” she said.

“Our oceans are full of plastic drink bottles.” 

“In the past few years, we’ve collected 1529 branded bottles from countries in the region of Asia, compared to 260 bottles sold in Australia,” she said.

The World Wildlife Foundation estimates that plastic bottles take 450 years to break down, disintegrating into toxic chemical parts.

Closer to home, the Victorian Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water’s National Plastics Plan Summary contains some gut-wrenching estimates.

The summary also states that 84 per cent  of Australia’s annual plastic consumption is single-use plastic and only 13 per cent of that is recycled.

If there were any faint hopes that future generations might reduce plastic waste, the reverse is true.

The department predicts that global plastic use will double by 2040.

These statistics are reflected in what Ms Hughson and her teams of litter collectors see every day they spend out on south-west Victorian beaches.

“It’s incredibly concerning that bulk-buy plastic drink bottles are on the rise in our supermarkets and petrol stations, normalising them rather than inviting people to refill reusable drink bottles,” Ms Hughson said.

Bottles overboard

Ms Hughson has recently uncovered another issue that she thinks is being overlooked — the practice of ships allegedly dumping rubbish at sea, possibly to avoid Australia’s port rubbish disposal costs.

Ms Hughson did a current stocktake of the origins of beach bottle rubbish and revealed that the most highly littered brands could only be purchased overseas.

“We’ve identified 305 foreign brands from over 50 countries. The two most popular brands of water bottles that we collect are Nongfu Spring and Master Kong, both from China.”

The nearby Port of Portland has a naturally deep channel that makes it a gateway to international markets in China, Japan, Korea, Indonesia and Taiwan. Many of the ships that harbour in Portland are crewed by overseas workers, who stock their food and water in other countries. 

In a recent video, Ms Hughson invited beach communities around the world to join her #bottlesoverboard citizen science project. 

She’s also campaigning for Australian and world leaders to take action to prevent ships from illegally dumping garbage at sea.

After a year of championing the issue, Ms Hughson said she will take part in an online “round table” meeting with state, federal environmental ministers, port ministers, Australian Maritime Safety Australia and Shipping Australia next month.