2022 has been a busy year for us here at Life’s a Beach. We have been to beaches up and down the country, and have met a whole host of wonderful people.
We want to thank the following groups for giving up their time to help keep our UK beaches and waterways clean.
ProCook:
ProCook staff gave up their time on two clean events this year. Their outstanding team also give their time throughout the year developing the new Life’s a Beach product range and selling it in stores to fund our charitable works. A massive thank you to everyone at ProCook who works so hard to support us.
PrintWaste:
PrintWaste staff also assisted on two cleans events, collecting rubbish and taking it away to be disposed of correctly. We are so grateful.
Over 305 volunteers gave 20 hours of their time across the year!
Other groups who helped out on cleans this year included:
- Adventure Bike Hire Slimbridge, who donated canoes to help us clean hard to reach areas.
- ProCook Bideford Store
- 1st Torrington Girl Guiding groups
- Bangor University, Endeavour Society
- Swansea University, Student Union
- Bristol University, Marine Biology Department
- Falmouth University, EcoSoc, Green Living Society, Marine Watch
This year we collected 139 bags of waste from seven locations. This weighed a total of 202.56 kilos.
Some of the most common items we found:
- Wet wipes
- Plastic bottle caps
- Netting/ ghost gear/ fishing gear
- Drinks bottles and cans
- Small broken pieces of plastic
- Wire fencing/ barbed wire – we found 30 kilos of this across our cleans.
- Face masks
- Surprisingly, one of our most found items was plastic hair combs. We found at least one of every single clean this year, with a whopping seven being found at Westward Ho! beach, Devon.
Some of the most unusual items we found:
- A nemo fish toy
- A giant pair of scissors
- Several intact light bulbs
- A full bottle of mayonnaise
- A setting pole for boating
- A roll of carpet
- Teddy bears
- A one tonne bag completely full and buried in the sand.
On one clean alone we collected 1400 individual pieces of waste, weighing in at 35.56 kilos in total!
We have also donated over 254 reusable water bottles to volunteers so they can stop using single-use bottles and cut down on their plastic waste.
We also launched our new children bottles with the hopes of encouraging more people to ditch disposable and invest in reusable products. By switching to sustainable alternatives you not only save yourself the costs of buying single-use items, you are also helping to save the planet by cutting down on your waste.
Our new steel water dispensers saw over forty-five thousand people this year in Bristol Aquarium alone! We cant wait to give away more bottle filler stations to allow even more people to refill their reusable bottles for free.
Overall, we are thrilled with what we have achieved this year, and have our eyes set resolutely on all the amazing things we have planned for 2023. Thank you to every single person who has helped us this year on our mission to reduce single-use plastic and keep our beaches clean.
