Beach Cleaning

This weekend I took part in the Great British beach clean initiative. This project has been running for 25 years and encourages people to help conserve coastlines by collecting litter and other discarded objects. Over the summer I took part in several beach cleans in Dorset where many beaches now provide litter pickers and bags and ask visitors to undertake a 2 minute beach clean.

This weekend was a little different because the beach clean I joined was not on the coast but on the shore of the River Severn. It was organised by Slimbridge Wildfowl and Wetlands Centre as part of their Waders Weekend. We met with other volunteers and WWT staff in the car park and travelled down to the river on a trailer pulled by a Land Rover - this was great fun! We then spread out along the tideline to hunt for rubbish. This involved sifting through all the washed up debris and walking through large areas of tall reeds.

We found numerous pieces of plastic, polystyrene, straws, bottles and sweet wrappers, we also found some more unusual objects including the remains of an old ambulance, a Father Christmas ball, a plastic fish and a plastic money box (sadly it was empty of money!). After just a couple of hours the group had gathered enough rubbish to require a trailer to transport it back to the WWT centre where is was going to be sorted and as much as possible recycled.

It was good to know that I had helped clean up the environment not only for the local birds but also the marine creatures who could have been harmed if the rubbish got as far as the sea. I would now like to get my own litter picker so that whenever I am out walking near my home I can reduce the amount of rubbish in my local environment to make it a safer place for wildlife.