May 27th 2019, Porthkerry Country Park
On a very sunny bank holiday Monday, the Life’s a Beach team and a number of volunteers headed to Porthkerry Country Park in Barry, Wales to support the fantastic work of the Friends of Barry Beaches organisation by spending an hour picking litter from the beach and surrounding green spaces. The event had a great turnout with a total of 40 volunteers giving up an hour of their long weekend to keep Barry’s beaches clean.
The beach clean was a fantastic opportunity for the team to put the brand new litter pickers and high vis jackets for good use, helping to contribute to the 8 bags collected in the hour long event – 6 filled with rubbish and 2 with recycling. As we kept our eyes open to spot any litter that had been left behind, blown onto or washed up on the beach we were delighted that bank holiday beach-goers approached us with their rubbish through fear of it getting blown out their hands by the blustery sea breeze.
It’s important to remember that not all litter on the beach is discarded deliberately, and much of it simply blows out of the hands of little ones, off prams and even straight out of bins that run the length of the beachfront. So next time you spot rubbish on the side of the path, on the beach or blowing around in the park don’t forget to pick it up – it’s easy to get into the mindset of ‘why should I pick it up when I take all my rubbish with me‘ but if we all had that attitude our green spaces, beaches and parks would soon be overwhelmed with litter.
Porthkerry Country Park boasts 220 acres of woods and meadowland in a sheltered valley leading to a pebble beach and spectacular cliffs. Visitors can enjoy a number of nature trails, stop for a bite to eat at the café or picnic sites and little ones can run off extra energy at the adventure play area. The site is a fantastic spot to enjoy a day out with family and friends and our beach cleans do not only help preserve our beaches and wildlife, but ensure that we can also continue to enjoy these sites for many years to come.
Beach cleans are a fantastic way to engage little ones in the conversation around caring for the environment, and don’t forget – they’re always more than welcome to join in with Life a Beach events! Perhaps you could even make it into a game and count what they’ve collected? This information can be passed along to various groups such as Keep Wales Tidy and the Marine Conversation Society who can then use this data to write reports on the state of our beaches here in the UK.
We fund our beach cleaning efforts through the sale of the Life’s a Beach range on the ProCook website, in ProCook stores and on our Amazon site. 10% of every sale goes to Life’s a Beach and means that we can organise events such as these, or support events held by others to help eradicate single use plastics from British beaches. For more information surrounding the work of Life’s a Beach click here.
If you want to get involved with Friends of Barry Beaches next clean check out their Facebook page for all of their latest updates and information surrounding their next event. You can download their schedule here:
If you know of an event happening near you and would be interested in Life’s a Beach getting involved, please do get in touch.
