In article ,
"W. Watson" wrote:

Unfortunately, my question was posted near the start of a long trip.

Welcome home.

Now I
have an opportunity to respond. Do you something a little more positive to
say?

No. But I did crack up one of our roomies, which was my primary
intention.


Pardon me, I forgot to mention the particles are about 1 mm in diameter. My
guess is there's a simple chemical that will do the job, that is, dissolve
them.

Well, it's a bad guess. Try wikipedia's article on polyethylene:

"Most LDPE, MDPE and HDPE grades have excellent chemical resistance and
do not dissolve at room temperature because of their crystallinity.
Polyethylene (other than cross-linked polyethylene) usually can be
dissolved at elevated temperatures in aromatic hydrocarbons such as
toluene or xylene, or in chlorinated solvents such as trichloroethane or
trichlorobenzene."

Now, if you have time to run off on trips, you've got time to pick the
**** up, or pay some kid to do it. Let's say there's 10,000 pieces, and
you can pick up one piece every two seconds. Round that down to 25
pieces per minute. Figuring actively working 50 minutes per hour, that's
1250 pieces per hour. That's exactly one 8 hour day of the simplest
manual labor. I hope you're not bemoaning your terrible plight.



Smitty Two wrote:
In article ,
"W. Watson" wrote:

Well, I had a meltdown with one my blue plastic tarps by leaving it in the
sun and outdoors too long. Little blue strands are now in the gravel and
some plant areas. How to get rid of them? Maybe there's something
non-toxic
that will dissolve them? Other ideas?

Do you have opposing thumbs?