EMILY STEVENSON

Marine Scientist, Voluntary Community Action

Suggested by Jo Hague

Jo says, “Emily is currently undertaking her PhD research at the University of Exeter’s Environment and Sustainability Institute and Plymouth Marine Laboratory. She is investigating the role of microplastics in the spread of disease.

Emily has been picking up plastics from beaches in Cornwall for more than half her life. Living by the sea, she witnesses first hand the destruction happening on the beaches, in the seas and to marine life. At 11, Emily was given a school project to create art inspired by the beach. Her idea was to make something attractive from something damaging, destructive and unpleasant in order to attract attention and change perceptions of waste. This laid the foundation for Emily’s undergraduate degree in Marine Biology at the University of Plymouth.

In January 2018, when she was 21, Emily made the front page of the Telegraph newspaper holding a 21 year old Walkers Crisp packet she had found on the beach. Her “Walkers Crisp Dress” graduation outfit attracted a live interview on BBC Spotlight, Sky news, and media attention from across the globe.*

After completing her degree, Emily and her dad Rob, started an NGO called Beach Guardian as a platform to organise community beach cleans, engaging with businesses, schools and politicians and to educate and raise awareness of plastic pollution.

To get more people interested Emily started looking at the human health impacts of plastics. She found some of the first evidence showing E. coli was present on microplastics on bathing beaches which subsequently led to her masters and current PhD studies.”

@beachguardian
@emilystevensonbg

pml.ac.uk
exeter.ac.uk

*Walkers Crisps now offer a recycling scheme