11 New Medica staff volunteered their time with us to run a beach clean in Weston-Super-Mare. There had been heavy storms in the days prior to this clean, so there was a lot of litter washed up by the high tides. Luckily, we arrived just in time to collect up the rubbish!
Lots of litter was sitting along the strandline amongst the seaweed. Most notably, there were dozens of plastic bottles on the sand. When we consider that a plastic bottle can last for up to 450 years in a marine environment, it is essential that we collect up as much plastic pollution as we can. Some of the more unusual things we found included, a toy solider, toy car parts, pieces of a headlight, and a boob shaped stress-ball. Volunteers scoured the sands, climbed into the dunes, and untangled fishing wire for almost three hours!
The team worked hard to collect up as much litter as possible, with some volunteers filling multiple bags. From large items like plastic sheets and metal spikes, to tiny microplastic pieces. They managed to fill up 14 bags of litter that weighed in at a very impressive 61.32 kilos! This brings our annual total here at Life’s a Beach to a whopping 1854.64 kilos of litter collected so far this year!
We want to say a huge thank you to everyone from New Medica who volunteered their time. If you would like to organise a company beach clean with us, contact hello@lifesabeach.org for more information.
