Great British Beach Clean event collects far too much rubbish!
On Sunday 17th September, 35 hardy souls took the beach armed with litter pickers, gloves, hi-vis jackets and bin bags to rid the beach of litter as part of the Great British Beach Clean Weekend.
Due to the high numbers, groups were split into two with Fiona McKenna from Keep Britain Tidy’s Beach Care Team and Victoria Russell from VANEL leading one group and Peter and Carol Kingsford, members of the Cleethorpes Jo Cox Community Action Group and Beach Care Leaders in the Cleethorpes area, leading the other.
With the sun shining, both groups took to opposite sides of the beach. Starting at Thorpe Park’s Carpark, Fiona and Victoria’s team headed left towards Buck Beck Bridge and Peter and Carol’s team heading right towards the Humber Yacht Club.
Both sides found a cacophony of litter with some of the more interesting items including; socks, rope, flip flops, a dolls head and multiple parts of a bike including a pedal, reflectors, brake wires and bike bell. As part of the clean, the team heading towards the Buck Beck beach took part in the Marine Conservation Societies litter clean survey covering the first 100 metres of the clean. During this stretch, 57 sweet/crisp wrappers were collected along with 37 polystyrene pieces and cups, 25 cigarette stubs and a massive 11 bags of dog poop! For a polystyrene cup to degrade, we are looking at a minimum of 500 years for it to fully degrade. Plastic bottles take up to 450 years to degrade with cigarette stubs taking between 18 months to 10 years to fully decompose depending on which environment they are in. More shockingly, on our collection, approximately 19 whole glass bottles were picked up. It is estimated that glass bottles take a whopping 1 million years to vanish!
Unfortunately, a total of 21 bags weighing a remarkable 126kg of litter were collected on the clean with 10kg of this being dog poo alone. That is the equivalent of 19 stone or 6,300 rolls of sushi or 252 fluffy kittens!
Following the beach clean, volunteers were taken into Thorpe Park’s Show Room for free teas, coffees and biscuits courtesy of A.F Blakemore.
Huge thanks go to all of the volunteers, Fiona McKenna from Keep Britain Tidy, Anglian Water, A F Blakemore, Compass FM, Thorpe Park and the Local Council for their support in the event.
