About The 1000 Tyres Project

The 1000 Tyres Project aims to remove tyres and other marine litter from our marine environment, starting by cleaning up Plymouth Sound in Devon, UK.  This project started in 2020 and has already removed tonnes of rubbish from the seabed and foreshore.  While looking for shipwrecks for another project we found hundreds of tyres and other litter that had been dumped in the sea.  Tyres pollute the sea by producing large quantities of microplastics and by leaching poisonous chemicals into the water, so we decided to remove as many as we could.

The 1000 Tyres Project team clean up underwater and on the foreshore, we find the litter on the seabed using sonar then we identify it and record its location.  The tyres and rubbish are recovered by unpaid volunteers or for bigger jobs we use commercial diving contractors, and it is recycled by our commercial partners.  The project team also spend time fundraising or educating the public and stakeholders about the problems of marine litter. The 1000 Tyres Project is run by The SHIPS Project CIC , a community social enterprise.

Media Use Policy

Our images and text are published under a CC attribution non-commercial licence (unless stated otherwise) . Feel free to use the information for non-commercial purposes but please credit 'The SHIPS Project'. Please read more about it here.

The 1000 Tyres Project is kindly supported by Sea Changers and Chris Parkes Photography .