Beach Clean Event

Here I am back on Shoreham Beach to help out at a litter clean event organised by the Friends of Shoreham Beach. Litter is a big problem on many of our beaches and Shoreham Beach is sadly no different. Not only does this litter make the beach look very messy but it is also very harmful to wildlife.

This is Joy introducing me to all the volunteers who have come to help clean the beach.

As you can see there were a lot of volunteers, (50 in total) a mixed group of helpers of all ages. They worked really hard cleaning up the litter. My legs are very short and it was a bit hard for me to keep up, walking on all those pebbles, so two girls, Eva and Alice carried me for a while in their back pack.

We collected almost 30 bags of litter in total, phew! This is us all having a well deserved break.

Out of all the different types of litter found on the beach the most common material is plastic. This does more damage to wildlife, in and out of the water, than any other type of litter. A million sea birds and 100, 000 marine mammals around the world die each year from being entangled in, or by swallowing, plastic litter. About 30 - 40% of the litter found on the beach is left behind by beach visitors. This means that if we could encourage people to take it home instead of leaving it on the beach this would make a big difference.
Better still, people can take their litter home and recycle it along with the rest of their household rubbish. Removing all the plastic rubbish in the ocean is impossible. We can all help though by making sure no more plastic ends up in the ocean. Recycling can also save oil, as this is used to make new plastic items.

At the Eco Schools conference we took part in all the participants (including ourselves) were given a bag like the one below.

It may be hard to believe but this bag was made from recycled plastic bottles. I hope you all recycle as much of your household rubbish as you can.

Bye for now

Ed