Shattered Plastics in Soil

Hey y’all! I recently moved onto land and the longer I’ve been here, the more plastic I’ve noticed strewn all about. Certain areas have a ton of shattered greenhouse plastic, plastic from old trash bags, etc mixed in with the soil. I’ve been doing my best to pick it all up by hand but I was wondering if anyone has gone through something similar and has any tips for me. I’m also concerned about the broken down micro plastics. Any advice would be so appreciated.

Have you though of making a type of sifter with hardware cloth and a wooden frame? Or some other materials? You might be able to place your sifter over a box or wheelbarrow, put a shovel of soil on, then shake allowing the soil to drop under and the plastic to stay above.  Of course, the smaller particles might still go through, but it might catch out some of the other pieces. The sifter can be repurposed as a compost sifter for making finer potting soil.

Ary Feral wrote:Hey y’all! I recently moved onto land and the longer I’ve been here, the more plastic I’ve noticed strewn all about. Certain areas have a ton of shattered greenhouse plastic, plastic from old trash bags, etc mixed in with the soil. I’ve been doing my best to pick it all up by hand but I was wondering if anyone has gone through something similar and has any tips for me. I’m also concerned about the broken down micro plastics. Any advice would be so appreciated.

I’ve been picking up remnant trash for five years. Obviously less as time goes on, but it seems never ending. “Pick” away at it, is my recommendation..

Cool name btw..

Keep picking it up. It will be endless, but you're fighting the good fight. That counts.

All you can do is pick up any you come across. Trying to find every little piece is a losing battle. As for microplastics, they've been found literally everywhere, even the peak of Mount Everest, best to forget about them and do what you can.

Hi Ary,

Welcome to Permies.

I inherited a similar mess when I bought my land over 20 years ago.  I decided not to be overwhelmed but to make progress.   I have made a point of picking up a minimum of ten 55 gallon bags of trash each year.   That is enough to make real progress without eating up all my time. I have been here since 99, so i can reasonably say I have picked up 220 bags of trash.   While there is still a lot of trash still out there in the woods, the improvement is visible.

When the tarps that I use to protect some more fragile building materials or machines eventually start crumbling from the intense summer sun I just remove the plastic particles with a Ridgid shop vacuum. Of course some soil particles, leaves will also get sucked, but 95% of plastic is removed, because it's light.

There are a few microbes that have been shown to be able to digest micro-plastic. So I'd do anything you can to improve the fungal and bacterial health of the soil. Worms poop out a lot of bacteria, so they can help. If you have enough of them, hopefully some will adapt to eat the stuff you can't see - or at least sequester it.

Thank you all not only for the suggestions, but also the wonderfully motivating support. It’s so easy to feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of the cleanup and it’s immensely helpful to have encouragement. Thank you!!!

Yeah, I have a similar mess. I've cleaned up most of it since my plot is small, but I still find bits. Just yesterday I was setting some cinder blocks level to put up a new compost station and I unearthed 3 scraps of corrugated plastic greenhouse flooring, one strip of vinyl greenhouse plastic, and one chunk of styrofoam.

When I had whole sections of crumbled UV broken plastic like you show in the picture I just gave up, scooped the whole section including a little bit of soil and put it in the burnable trash. They incinerate most of the trash here. If it were a landfill I'm not sure what I would have done. Neither course is ideal in any way, but it can really just be soul crushing to try to take the moral high ground when faced with a shit storm that you didn't make. I say do the best you can, but don't let it break you.

Getting to this stage where I'm only finding bits once in a while took 7 years though. It used to be a daily pick-up.

Now I have an increasingly strict rule - No new non-biodegradable materials go into the garden.

Edit: If you're wondering about the cinder blocks breaking my rule, they were also here when I got here, so I'm still using some old non-biodegradable materials where I deem them appropriate... but fewer and fewer. This past season I transitioned from plastic/metal garden stakes and supports to pollarded mulberry poles and trellises lashed with jute. The reduction in stress is enormous, knowing I can just chop the whole thing down and throw it on my compost pile when it's not useful anymore.

L. Johnson wrote: If you're wondering about the cinder blocks breaking my rule, they were also here when I got here, so I'm still using some old non-biodegradable materials where I deem them appropriate... but fewer and fewer.

Living on land with an enormous collection of "rocks" of all shapes and sizes, I'm prepared to accept cinder blocks as simply a man-made version of "rock", with more regular dimensions. When I need something raised to a convenient height and don't have time to find "the right rocks", cinder blocks are darn handy. I prefer not to buy them, or at least not buy new, but I'm prepared to accept gently used blocks as I don't like them landing in the land-fill!

This past season I transitioned from plastic/metal garden stakes and supports to pollarded mulberry poles and trellises lashed with jute. The reduction in stress is enormous, knowing I can just chop the whole thing down and throw it on my compost pile when it's not useful anymore.

This - totally this! The stress reduction is not to be taken lightly. Taking things apart because it's the only way to separate the biodegradable parts from garbage is time consuming and not particularly joyful!

Welcome to the forum!

Ary, said, "Certain areas have a ton of shattered greenhouse plastic, plastic from old trash bags, etc mixed in with the soil.

Everyone has given great suggestions

I like Angela's idea for making a sifter to sift out smaller bits of plastic.

I really like Jay's suggestions to improve the fungal and bacterial health of the soil.

Birch trees have been shown to help remediates the soil. Oyster mushrooms can also help.

My suggestion would be to work on small area at a time. If you are planning a garden that would be a really great place to start.

Once an area is cleaned up, then start replacing the removed area with whatever organic materials you have at hand, such as wood ships, leaves, coffee grounds, vegetable scraps, mushroom compost, etc.

Meanwhile you might want to look at Dr. Bryant Redhawk's Soil Series:

https://permies.com/wiki/redhawk-soil

These might be of particular interest:

https://permies.com/t/63914/Soil

https://permies.com/t/86117/Bacteria-Fungi-Nematodes

I'm here to second Cristobal's shop vacuum method.

The thing about the plastic "shattering" is that it usually doesn't even withstand being picked up without breaking into even more, smaller, bits. Some of the bits become too small to pick up again, and of course they'll shatter too...
The vacuum works great, the plastic film and styrofoam beads are usually lighter than what they are lying around in, so if you bring the hose just close enough, you can suck the plastic with a minimum of dirt and rocks and leaves (a crevice tool might help as well).
The other great thing is that now the plastic bits are contained in the vacuum bin. They wont blow away, or out of your hand just as you release to drop into a bucket/bag/whatever...

If you are equipped with battery powered tools, there small battery shop-vacuums (I have the Milwaukee one, it's the size of a toolbox) so you don't have to be restricted to extension cord reach (or trying to wheel a shop vac on uneven ground).
One could also make an extension wand, so you wouldn't need to bend over...

Part of the battle is to make it easy for yourself to gather the stuff up.  I have little shreds of plastic all over my allotment but sometimes I am working and see a bit and it's just too much effort to stop what I'm doing and take it over to the trash bag.  So having plenty of receptacles in areas where you are working will make it as easy as possible.

I remembered this thread: insulation foam in soil. Chris Wilcox had a similar problem with bits of foam insulation where he wanted his vegetable plot, and I wonder whether his solution may work for you too.

Chris Wiklcox wrote:I half filled a large trash can with water and began slowly pouring the contaminated soil into it. The soil mostly sinks while the foam floats at the top and can be skimmed off periodically. Still labor intensive to be sure but it’s relatively quick and allows me to capture very small pieces of foam.

It probably is too much effort for the whole area, but if there is a bit that is particularly bad, or you prefer to be particularly clean it might be worth a try.

I feel your pain, every piece of land I have looked at for sale over the last twenty years has trash on it. Why people trash up their land is inconceivable to me. One thing I have learned, if there is trash on the ground, there is probably trash buried beneath the surface too somewhere.