What are Plastiglomerates?

New materials are constantly being discovered by researchers in laboratories, however some new and rather strange looking things can be seen outside the lab as well. Specifically speaking some strange items have been spotted on Kamilo beach in Hawaii. These alternative rocks look like chunks of garbage, but are actually a new type of stone called plastiglomerates.

These stones are formed when plastic litter melts in the heat of bonfires and mixes with wood, sand, basalt fragments and other rubbish. Needless to say they look like a pile of junk, but are as hard as the collective strength of all that they contain. Besides being a very physical evidence of what plastics are doing to the environment today, they are going to play an important role in the future as well.

Patricia Corcoran is a sedimentologist who feels that plastiglomerates will serve as markers for the era where human beings began to use plastics and discard them en mass into the environment. Perhaps some day in the future a child will hold a plastiglomerate in his hand and work on a science project trying to figure out just what the exact components of the rock are!