Here at Life’s a Beach we’ve teamed up with Bangor University’s Endeavour Society multiple times. One of our most enthusiastic groups of volunteers, they have previously collected more in a single clean than any other group ever. This time we returned to North Wales to join forces and tackle Bangor’s beaches once again.
We were sponsored by Bin It, who generously donated the bin bags used during this clean. Environmental friendly and 100% recycled, these durable bags were perfect for our volunteers!
Six volunteers arrived wrapped in coats to litter pick their local beach. Working along this stretch of beach, we traversed over pebbles, mud, and sand to pick out the litter from amongst the stones. Storm Fergus hit us in the morning and we were faced with gale force winds over 60 miles per hour. Despite these windy conditions we worked hard to collect as much litter as possible.
We luckily avoided most of the rain, but the wind made it difficult to keep hold of the lightweight food packaging we found so often. Something we found an awful lot of was food packaging. This kind of plastic waste is very light weight and easily caught up in the wind, meaning they are often blown out of bins and become litter. Unfortunately plastic items like this make up an average of 49% of all beach litter.
During our previous two trips to Bangor, we found unusual items such as a kilos upon kilos of barbed wire, a fridge door, a paint can, a bin, car parts, and bits of a broken vacuum cleaner. This time didn’t disappoint when it came to unexpected items. We found:
- A sleeping bag
- Part of a boat
- Car tyres
- A kettle
- A fishing weight
We also found lots of fabric items on this clean, which is something we don’t often find. Socks, clothes, large fabric strips, and a sleeping bag were just some of items found. Collecting up these items was tricky in the wind, but very satisfying.
This very rugged stretch of coastline was truly beautiful, and a wonderful place to hold our final beach clean of the year.
Our volunteers collected 8 bags of litter, weighing in at 23.32 kilos. This brings our total for this year to 347 bags, weighing 827.6 kilos. We collected this over 23 cleans, with the help of 630 volunteers over 45.5 hours. Thank you to everyone who volunteered with us this year, and a massive thank you to the Endeavour Society for working together on yet another clean with us.
