30 Days Wild Day 13: Cleaning up Goring Beach!

Number 13: unlucky for some but very lucky in my family! I'm pretty exhausted as I type this, from a combination of climbing up and down a pebbly beach and being battered by a relentless sea breeze. Today was my second organised beach clean-up event, held on behalf of the Marine Conservation Society; I held the first back in March. When I first woke up this morning, I was slightly dismayed to find that the weather was even more overcast and dim than when I did the first clean-up and even the breeze wasn't particularly warm. Thankfully, by the time I'd driven down to Worthing and picked up the litter pickers from the beach office (while weaving through the children's carnvial/parade thing that was marching down the beachfront), the sun had come out completely and the wind, although incredibly strong, was surprisingly mild and I didn't even have to put on my rain mac for an extra layer!

I had a brilliant team of volunteers again, slightly smaller in numbers than the first but all were eager to go, despite none of them having ever done an organised beach clean before. The only annoying thing we found as we began collecting litter was that the rubbish bags acted like sails in the strong gusts and nearly blew half of us away, as well as making putting small scraps in there very tricky! I think even with bag rings, we would have still had the same issue. I guess that's the risk you take when you're down on the coast! At least the wind/kite surfers were able to make the most of it.

I picked up quite a number of metal drinks cans this time around as well as plenty of pieces of fishing line and rope. Thankfully, we didn't come across any dead animals or pack yokes that are notorious for strangling wildlife. Still, considering the beach had only been cleaned three months ago, the amount of litter about was surprising. It will be interesting to see at the next event in September how it has fared after a summer of picnics, BBQs, fish and chips, and ice creams have been consumed. I like to think that most people are like me; happy to take their rubbish to the nearest bin or home with them. Sadly, I know this isn't the case for many of the UK and it drives me mad. There's really no excuse for it. 

Balloons are not biodegradable

There were plenty of interesting items that were naturally occuring, including a huge abundance of whole cuttle fish. Normally, I only see left-over pieces of these but not today. A great number of whelk egg-cases were scattered around as well as large pieces of crab shell and shark egg cases. I'm quite tempted to come back during the month and have a little beach-combing session actually, to give me a chance for a closer look.

It was lovely being out in the fresh air with the sun beaming down, even with that keen wind! I do enjoy seeing a group of strangers working together to make a difference in such a way as this and it instills a renewed sense of hope in me that there are people who care about our environment and want to take care of it. One of the volunteers actually asked if she could collect some of the fishing line and rope for her textile work at university, which she will recycle and turn into fabric! What a great and innovative way to make a negative into a positive.

Among other categories, we collected: 

25 metal items

20 sanitary items

16 paper items

243 (!) plastic items

The amount of plastic items over every other materials still astounds me. There were quite a few make-up wipes which I have never flushed down the toilet but apparently some people do! I'd love to be able to encourage more people to take part in these events, if only to open their eyes to what happens to the items we put down the loo. Thanks to my brilliant volunteers, we collected over 5kg of rubbish which is great! 

If you are interested in taking part in a beach clean-up for the MCS, visit www.mcsuk.org or sing up for my next event on 19th September here: http://www.mcsuk.org/beachwatch/beach/goring-sea/event/2015-09-19 

Cleaning up Goring-by-Sea!

It may have been heavily overcast and the wind may have had a slight chill to it, but that didn't stop myself and 22 other brilliant volunteers from arming ourselves with litter pickers and tackling the shores of Worthing on Sunday!

I posted back in January about becoming a beachwatch survey organiser for the Marine Conservation Society and the weekend just gone saw my first event go ahead. I was quite nervous beforehand, having never arranged anything like this before, and I was concerned that less volunteers would turn up than the 18 I had confirmed on the site. Particularly as, despite the Saturday being gloriously sunny and (dare I say) Spring-like, the weather on Sunday was that of heavy cloud that was certainly not budging. I was pleasantly surprised when the allotted time came around (an hour after high tide, of course) and lots of people began to arrive, some seasoned beach-cleaners and some (like me!) who were brand new to the game, but all raring to go! We even had several younger (and very eager) volunteers which I was especially pleased to see. 

After giving a safety briefing and dividing everyone up into groups, all 23 of us headed over to the 100m strip of beach I had measured out earlier, with clipboards, litter-pickers and bin bags in hand. At first glance, there was a fair amount of rubbish to be collected but once we all got going and started recording each piece we found, it didn't take long at all for the bags to start bulging! I was both amazed and disgusted at the level of litter in such a small area. 

A huge amount of cable ties were found as well as fishing line, cotton bud sticks and rope. As would be expected, the vast majority of litter recorded was plastic. Happily, I had several volunteers say to me that they were really enjoying it and finding relaxing and therapeutic. I'm inclined to agree with that and after a while, I wasn't taking any notice of the biting wind, just focusing on the stretch of pebbles at my feet.

I estimated with the number of hands we had that the survey would take about an hour and I was more or less on the money. We piled all of our bags together and I weighed each one individually, finally coming to a grand total of 13.45kg! It really was astounding that we had jointly managed to collect quite so much from only 100m. When you stop and think about the amount of coastline we have in this country though, it's really very worrying to think how much litter is sitting on our beaches. If 23 people can pick up seven refuse bags worth of rubbish in an hour, just think how much more could be achieved if this was carried out all around the UK!

Even though the sun hadn't made an appearance all day, there were plenty of smiling faces as we finished up and started heading back to the car park. Several of the volunteers asked if there would be more cleans coming up and I am certainly eager to arrange future events based on the success of this one. It was really encouraging to see just how many people genuinely wanted to give up their time to do something so worthwhile. As one volunteer said, it really gives you a sense of pride.

In a nutshell, we collected:

-55 metal items

-3 medical items

-26 sanitary items

-31 paper items

-15 wood items

-26 glass items

-3 ceramic items

-615 plastic items!

-37 polystyrene items

-23 rubber items

-72 cloth items

A huge thank you to everyone who turned up and donated their time and energy! You were all fantastic!

If you are interested in future beach clean-ups, visit the MCS website.