LONDON — For three decades it was a mystery that seemed to defy belief.
Bright orange plastic novelty phones shaped like the grumpy cartoon cat Garfield kept washing up on the rocky Atlantic shoreline of Brittany, in western France.
Over the years, locals have picked up hundreds of pieces of the phones, including paws, headset cables and even Garfield heads, forever fixed in his familiar smirk. But nobody knew exactly where they came from.
Last week, volunteers cleaning the beaches solved the puzzle: The source of the Garfield phones was a long-lost shipping container, nestled in a rocky sea cave.
“This waste is over 30 years old, and we are still finding bits,” Fabien Boileau, the director of the Iroise Marine Natural Park told the news site FranceInfo, citing it as an example of plastic debris that never fully breaks down and contributes to ocean pollution.
The disturbing longevity of these plastic pieces, some of which look practically new, have made the Garfield phones into a local symbol of marine pollution. The mystery of the phones gained national prominence after journalists at FranceInfo reported on the case as part of a campaign called Pollution Alert.
Around 148 million shipping containers are sent by sea each year, according to the International Maritime Organization, a United Nations agency.
Between 2008 and 2016, shipping companies lost more than 1,500 containers on average each year, most during accidents such as capsizing, running aground or when sailing in heavy seas, according to a survey by the World Shipping Council, a trade association.
In one accident alone in 2014, more than 500 containers were lost from a ship run by the company Maersk in a storm in the Bay of Biscay.
Depending on what is in them, lost containers can have long-lasting effects on marine life and coastal communities. (Most of the containers lost in the 2014 Maersk accident were empty, and none contained hazardous material, the company said.)
Rules on reporting and dealing with lost containers vary globally. As part of an action plan on marine waste, the International Maritime Organization plans to discuss in May setting standard procedures for the reporting of lost containers and for addressing liability for plastic consumer goods lost at sea.
Volunteers in Brittany tracked down the source of the Garfield phones after a local man told them about a big storm that struck in the early 1980s. Last week they ventured into the sea cave, normally cut off by the tide and only accessible a few days each year, where they found metal from a container and Garfield-shaped phone shells, still containing potentially dangerous electronic components.
The telephones appeared to have been those made by Tyco, advertised in the 1980s as “real phones for real fun.” They feature a keypad, have a classic electric “ring” — and Garfield’s eyelids slide half-open when the user picks up the handset.
They have survived as vintage items, still sold on auction websites and at flea markets. They will also very likely continue to haunt the Brittany shoreline.
“Behind the fun character of Garfield, there is plastic pollution that does not decompose in the ocean, and that we will continue to face for years,” said Claire Simonin-Le Meur, a local volunteer.
