February 13, 2022 marks the 25th anniversary of the Great LEGO spill. It was the worst toy related environmental disaster of all time. On this fateful day in 1997, the Tokio Express was battered by a massive, 28-foot rogue wave off the United Kingdom’s coast. The force tilted the cargo ship on its way from Rotterdam to New York by 60 degrees causing it to drop 62 containers into the sea. One was filled with about 5,000,000 colorful LEGO bricks!

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Shortly after the accident, LEGO pieces began washing ashore on the beautiful beaches of Cornwall and Devon in England. The LEGO group provided a detailed inventory of the 4,756,940 40 pieces in the container. This has led the hunt for the elusive toys such as the green LEGO Dragons. With just 514 pieces in the container, the green dragons were much more challenging to find than the 33,427 black versions.

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Tracey Williams, a Cornwall resident, has spent hours combing the beaches looking for the little sea-themed pieces. She would take her young children on treasure hunts to find the LEGO pieces. Often they would return home with buckets of LEGOs.

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In 2010, Williams started a Facebook group called LEGO Lost At Sea. This allowed her and hundreds of other collectors to share their discoveries. As it turned out, the Lego bricks were not just washing ashore on English beaches. They had also been found in Wales, Ireland, the Channel Islands, France, Belgium, and Holland. This shows just how far the ocean currents had carried them.

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No one knows when the LEGO bricks will stop appearing on the beaches. A 2020 study of the structure of the washed up LEGO bricks concluded that the five million pieces could take as long as 1,300 years to degrade completely. Just like all plastic products, the iconic toys will never entirely disappear. Instead they will break down into tiny microplastics and be consumed by marine animals.

Finally, what is the author suggesting?

In 1997 the Tokio Express lost a container at sea filled with almost five-million LEGO bricks. Some of the rarest LEGOs to find have been the green dragons. Hours of searching would provide buckets of the LEGO pieces. The ocean currents have carried the LEGOs to five other countries. It will take a long time for the plastic in the LEGOs to breakdown completely, so in the meantime marine animals continue to eat the tiny plastic pieces.

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