We teamed up with volunteers from St. Modwen Logistics to clean up Severn Beach, overlooking The Severn Bridge. A very muddy beach, this stretch of river coastline wasn’t easy to traverse. Volunteers came well prepared in wellies and raincoats, ready to make a difference regardless of the weather.
St. Modwen Logistics are all about creating sustainable commercial developments that benefit everyone, having built the super sustainable the office we work out of. With this in mind, it isn’t surprising that their staff were so keen to get stuck in and clean this beach despite the rain and wind.
It was really surprising how much ghost gear we found during this clean. Abandoned fishing gear is found on almost every beach clean we do, we have never before found so much in one place though. Ghost gear is not only dangerous to people enjoying the beach, it is fatal to marine animals.
Pebble beaches act like giant nets when it comes to litter; debris is washed up by the tides and then caught between the stones. The stones also act as grinders, breaking up plastic items into microplastic pieces. There are several pebbles beaches we have cleaned this year, such as Brean and Westward Ho!, and every time we find lots of rubbish caught between the stones. Severn Beach was certainly no exception!
We found lots of items caught in the rocks, such as bottles, cans, plastic bags, and food wrappers things we find all too often on clean-up events.
Some of the more unusual things we found included:
- A CD of top hits from 2002
- A dog bowl
- Several candles
- A dustpan and brush
- A fence post covered in barbed wire
Volunteers cleared up 20.8 kilos of litter in just under two hours. An impressive feat! We want to say a massive thank you to St. Modwen Logistics for their time, their enthusiasm and their generous donation.
This clean brings our total for the year to a massive 780.39 kilos of litter collected from UK beaches, rivers, canals, forests, streets, and parks. Thank you to the 612 volunteers who have made that happen!
If you would like to organise a clean with us, please email hello@lifesabeach.org to get in touch.
