Yarborough School Do Their Bit To Love Our Seaside

Yesterday VANEL’s IGNITE team spent the day supporting staff and year one pupils from Yarborough school as they did their bit to Love Our Seaside. Love Our Seaside is Keep It Clear’s coastal campaign designed to engage with holidaymakers and those who live by the sea. The campaign has been launched this year to make sure the seas and beaches along our coast are kept clean and healthy for people and wildlife.

Fifty-three children turned out in their finest woolly hats and colourful wellies to participate in the litter picking event which was facilitated by VANEL. Also in attendance was Anglian Water’s Community Education Team Manager Marcia Davies and RiverCare and BeachCare Programme Officer Fiona McKenna from Keep Britain Tidy.

The day kicked off at 10:30am at Cleethorpes Discovery Centre where the children were debriefed as to what they could expect from the day, as well as some housekeeping rules. From there, and in two’s, the children eagerly made their way down to a section of beach near to the Leisure Centre. Upon reaching the beach they were greeted by two beach safety officers who delivered a talk on the importance of beach safety, and reminded the children of the number they would need to call in the event of a beach emergency. They also invited the children to think about the potential dangers that they might encounter whilst on the beach, to which one child replied “Sharks!”, much the amusement of the adults on the beach. However, the grown-ups may have laughed too soon as the beach officer informed us that small sharks do dwell off the Cleethorpes Coast.

 

The primary dangers were of course, the water itself, sand dunes, marshland, glass and other such sharp objects buried in the sand, dog dirt, and shockingly, washed up and unexploded WW1/2 bombs. Unperturbed by the threat of shark attack or unexploded world war memorabilia, the children armed themselves with rubber gloves and litter pickers. The children were divided into groups and chaperoned by a member of teaching staff and given flags which they could place next to hazardous materials such as dog dirt or sharp objects. The unfortunate job of collecting flagged material fell to Keep Britain Tidy’s Fiona McKenna.

When asked what was her favourite part of the day, Yarborough year one school pupil, Megan, said: “I liked collecting shells and making people in the sand”.  Over the course of the day, the children removed 4kg of dog dirt from the beach and 13 small bags of rubbish.  Fiona said: “Overall the children haven’t found as much dog dirt on the beach as I would have expected and the bags of litter that they have collected are relatively small which is good”.