The Marine Conservation Society (MCS) organised a Big Beach Clean on 11-13 May, collecting a whopping 11,500kg of litter, and Coastwise volunteers were out at Croyde helping. Strange as it sounds, rubbish collecting is fun !
There were over 6,000 volunteers cleaning over 100 beaches and waterways up and down the country. The sun didn’t shine at every beach but this didn’t stop them from filling over 3,200 bin bags of rubbish, including 12,800 wrappers and 2,850 tin cans. Members of Coastwise led the group of 90 volunteers who took part in the Big Beach Clean at Croyde on Friday 11 May. 55 children, parents and teachers came from Bishops Tawton Primary School – lots of wonderful photos can be seen on the school website. Volunteers marked out and cleaned three separate stretches of beach, each 100 meters in length, at the southern end of Croyde. MCS beach cleans are different from others in that everything picked up is recorded in detail. This helps the MCS analyse what is left where, in what quantities and from which countries. The main problem is pieces of plastic, of which 946 were picked up. These can be ingested by sea birds and other animals with terrible consequences. Bottle glass is an obvious problem – eight glass bottles and lots of splinters were recovered. Very welcome snacks were provided at the end of the morning by Marks & Spencers.