'1970s' Fairy Liquid bottle washes up on Brighton beach

Sammie Aplin was carrying out her daily beach clean on Saturday morning when she spotted the Fairy Liquid bottle on the pebbles by Brighton Palace Pier.

The bottle was partially destroyed, but its distinctive branding remained “remarkably” intact.

The bottle found on Brighton beach is believed to be from the 1970s

Sammie, who lives in Waterloo Street, Hove, says she looked up images of Fairy Liquid through the decades and matched it to bottles dating back to 1970.

She told The Argus: “I was walking to work, and it was after it had been quite stormy, so I was strolling along the low-tide line and it was just lying there really.

“I picked it up and I saw the label that read ‘2p’ so I thought it must be pretty old. I Googled it and I matched it to one from the 1970s so it must have been made around a similar time.

Sammie carries out a daily beach clean everyday in Brighton and Hove

“The lid is still on and you can still read the writing, it’s not in a bad condition considering it’s been out in the ocean for half a decade.”

Sammie, 29, started carrying out daily beach cleans just before lockdown last year and uses social media to document her finds.

She has now started making artwork using her finds, which have included disposable face masks, children’s toys and cable ties.

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Sammie said: “It’s almost like meditation in a way. Just walking along the beach, not having to think too much.

“You get a really feelgood feeling from picking up the rubbish and making the place look cleaner.

“That’s when I thought maybe there’s something more I could be doing with these bits, which is when I started making the artwork.”

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Sussex Dolphin Project, a charity project of The World Cetacean Alliance, say the find is a “stark reminder” of the extent of the plastic pollution crisis.

Thea Taylor, Sussex Dolphin Project lead, said: “Discarded plastics can be detrimental to wildlife in many ways such as injury through entanglement and ingestion.

“Furthermore, toxins accumulate on the surfaces of plastic particles, binding to them even as they break down to microplastics and are ingested by marine organisms.

• READ MORE: Dozens of sea creatures found dead on beaches across Sussex

“This is a huge problem as microplastics and the associated toxin levels increase as you go up the food chain, and our dolphins are one of the top predators in these waters.

“This means that they are potentially ingesting high levels of toxins and microplastics in their diet.

“This is also a problem for us as microplastics are now entering the human food chain through the fish we catch, and evidence has now been found of microplastics in the tissue of fish in supermarkets."

In 2018, a 47-year-old Fairy Liquid Bottle washed up on Brean Beach in Burnham, Somerset.