Beach Clean at Weston-Super-Mare

Life’s a Beach teamed up once again with our friends from ProCook and Printwaste. Volunteers gave up their time to tackle the Weston-super-Mare seafront. Twenty two people, armed with pickers and gloves took to the sands to clear up the rubbish we found there. The weather, that had been torrential rain for days, was luckily dry, giving us plenty of time to clean without getting soaked.

At first we found mostly small objects, lots of pieces of plastic as well as an overwhelming number of cigarette buts and wet wipes. However, the small items of rubbish soon gave way to larger, and more unusual objects. Here are some of the weirdest things we found:

• A christmas sock
• A toy cat
• Plastic spades
• Large garden scissors
• A dog bowl
• A rubble bag
• An acrylic nail
• A shuttlecock
• A bikini top
• A teddy bear

The most challenging part of the clean was unearthing this rubble bag. Many of us spent time digging, tugging, and wishing it would come free. One of our volunteers had the genius idea to borrow a spade from a nearby building site and together we began to remove the sand around and inside the bag. To quote Daniel O’Neill, “we wont let this bag beat us”.

We recovered a staggering 80 kilos of waste from the beach in just two hours. This waste has been sent to a Waste-to-Energy plant for energy recovery (incinerated to make electricity). 80kg will produce 50 kWh of electricity, which is enough to make 4,000 cups of tea or coffee – based on a standard mug size.

We finished the day with well deserved chips, enjoying the sunshine and the sense of achievement. Thank you to everyone who volunteered their time and energy.

If you are part of a group, organisation, or company that would like to volunteer for a beach clean, please contact Sophie at sophie.chappell@lifesabeach.org to find out more.