Volunteers make unexpected 40-year-old find while cleaning local grasslands: 'A huge problem'

A group of British volunteers made an unsettling discovery while cleaning up their local grasslands.

What's happening?

Volunteers with Barnes Common Limited, a conservation nonprofit in the Barnes neighborhood of London, were picking up trash when one spotted an old candy wrapper. And we mean really old.

As Richmond Nub News reports, the Mars Bar wrapper appears to be from 1985. But not only was it decades old, it was also fully intact.

"As you can see, our wrapper is about 40 years old and is still looking great, which isn't such good news for the system it was deposited in," the organization wrote in a blog post. "Litter and waste, especially plastic waste, is a huge problem for our environment."

Why is this concerning?

The candy wrapper was made of polypropylene, a common type of packaging plastic that makes up 16% of the entire plastic industry.

According to research published in the journal "Materials Today: Proceedings," polypropylene can take up to 30 years to decompose naturally. As the wrapper shows, however, that isn't necessarily the case. And the longer plastics take to degrade, the longer they pollute our landfills, grasslands, or streams.

Watch now: Giant snails invading New York City?

Giant snails invading New York City?

0 seconds of 41 secondsVolume 0%

00:00

00:41

Each year, more than 500 million tons of plastic are produced globally, and more than 22 million tons of plastic litter ends up in the environment, according to data from the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

And once it's in nature, it isn't just an eyesore — it's continuing to contaminate the soil and water around it. In Australia, for example, research has found that birds are using littered plastic in their nests, and the chemicals that leach from that plastic can harm chicks.

What's being done to solve this?

If you spot a candy wrapper on the ground in the future, it is still important to pick it up, but hopefully, it will be made of a more eco-friendly material. Mars Incorporated has tested recyclable paper wrappers for its chocolate bars.

Other food companies have also gotten in the act of using greener packaging. Heinz spent more than $1 million creating a new, recyclable bottle cap, Kellogg's plans to expand its eco-friendly boxes and bags, and Coca-Cola recently announced it has adopted recycled plastic for its 20-ounce bottles in the United States, a move it says will save 80 million pounds of new plastic use.