Among the many items of plastic washing up on the beaches of the Isle of Wight, Smartie lids are among the more noticeable and surprising. Noticeable because of their colour and because many of us feel some childhood nostalgia when we see them. And surprising because Nestle – who took over the brand from Rowntree - replaced the plastic lids on the famous tubes of coloured sweets with cardboard lids in 2005.
So, if production of the plastic lids ended nearly 20 years ago, why are beach cleanup volunteers of Planet Aware still discovering them? A recent report from Cornwall may supply some answers. Smartie lids have been landing on Cornish beaches dating back to the sixties. Some of the plastic has been sitting in sand dunes and landfill and only now - with erosion - they are being released into the sea and found on beaches.
Of course, if you do find a plastic lid on the beach, please pick it up and dispose of it responsibly. Alternatively, you could take it home and keep it as a piece of history. In fact, you can even try your hand at plastic archaeology by trying to date the lid. Here’s a quick history lesson to help you with this:
The first Smarties were made in 1937, but they weren’t sold in tubes with inch wide plastic lids until the 1950s. The name ‘Rowntree’ was written on the top of the lid. By the late fifties and early sixties, they also had a random letter on the underside. If you find a lid which is less than an inch in diameter – 22mm to be precise – that means it was produced after 1965 when Rowntree switched to metric measurements. Also look closely at the letter; until 1975 the letters were all capitalized but then written in lower case from ’75 to ‘88. In 1988, Nestle replaced the Rowntree name on the top of the lid with the name ‘smarties’. If you find a lid with a letter but no name on the other side, it’s probably from an overseas manufacturer producing a similar type of sweet and might well be much more recent.
Aside from the general interest of dating such items, the phenomenon does highlight how long plastic survives in our environment and poses a danger to sea life and coastlines. So whether you find one while relaxing on the beach or you decide to join up with Planet Aware and clean them off the beaches, let’s try to thoroughly consign the lids to history once and for all.
References and further reading
Report on Smartie lids on Cornish beaches: https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornwall-news/dozens-decades-old-plastic-smarties-2242474#
Dating Smartie lids on the beach: https://www.beachstuff.uk/smarties_lids.html#R%20+%20bigger
Comments