Plastic Beach – LOVEmyBEACH collect tonnes of litter from the coast in one year.

The St Annes LOVEmyBEACH group

The St Annes North LOVEmyBEACH BeachCare group have collected an astonishing two tonnes of litter from the coast in one year.

This is the equivalent of a new-born blue whale, an adult great white shark or large car.On Thursday 2nd May, the group weighed the rubbish they found on the beach, which they have done each week when they meet every Thursday. Each volunteer ends the beach clean with a huge bag of litter that has washed up on the beach or been left there by visitors.This week was a momentous occasion as they reached the two-tonne mark, but is also a stark reminder that our behaviour has a huge impact on our beaches and seas.

Michael Pearson, the Group Leader for St Annes North BeachCare group said ‘The volunteers have collected over 2000kg of litter from the beach and sand dunes since 4th April 2018. On 2nd May they collected 30kg and reached 2021kg. On some beach cleans they can collect up to 100kg in just 2 hours.’

Emily Parr, Fylde’s LOVEmyBEACH Officer commented ‘It is an incredible achievement for the St Annes North BeachCare group that in just one year they have collected over 2000kg of litter. It demonstrates how dedicated the volunteers are in ensuring St Annes beach is a safe and clean beach for residents, visitors and wildlife to enjoy.’

Emily continued ‘However, it is also quite shocking to hear that amount of litter has been on the beach in the first place.  It is a strong reminder to everyone to ensure their behaviours are not contributing to this beach litter. If everyone can take all their litter home from the beach, pick up after their dog and only flush the 3Ps (pee, poop and paper), hopefully next year there won’t be 2000kg of litter on the beach that needs collecting.’

The most common items they find are:

• The usual culprits  – plastic wrappers, wet wipes, cotton bud sticks, drinks bottles, cigarette butts,  plastic fragments which have broken off larger items etc
• Fishing lines
• Disposable barbeques, food packaging, bottles and cans that have been left in the dunes after a picnic or party
• Dog poo (even bagged), which dog owners and dog walkers have left behind on the beach.
• Over summer they collected over 100 plastic beach toys that had been left behind and these have been cleaned and will be reused by children this summer.
• The most unusual item they have found over the last year is a blow up female doll.
• Volunteer Dave Gorman said ‘If you think about the amount we’ve collected here over the year and multiply that by the number of groups along the coast and up and down the country, it must be a phenomenal amount of litter.’

The St Annes group meet every Thursday at 10am in North Beach Car Park, St Annes and are out rain or shine. They clean the beach for two hours and new volunteers are very welcome.

Details of this and other beach cleans across the North West can be found on the LOVEmyBEACH website: www.lovemybeach.org