PART of a chain of plastic bottle tops created in Cornwall has been presented to the European Commissioner for the Environment and Maritime Affairs.

Caps and lids for the kilometre-long chain were collected by volunteers all over Cornwall and Devon to make a strong statement on marine waste.

Campaigners from the Rame Peninsula took a 110m section of the chain to Bristol yesterday to meet one of Europe's most senior environmental officials,

Commissioner Karmenu Vella.

The meeting with him was secured by South West MEP Clare Moody.

'We were there to discuss what can and should be done at EU level to tackle the marine litter problem,' said Claire Wallerstein, of Rame Peninsula Beach Care. We wanted to give the commissioner a sense of the scale of the issue – and also of how passionately ordinary people from all walks of life care about the sea and what is happening to it.'

MEP Clare Moody said that 'real action' was needed to combat the threat to the environment from plastic debris.

'I am determined to push this issue at a European level,' she said. 'How we mitigate the threat that plastic debris poses to our marine environment is one of the most important questions of our time.'