“ There is no such thing as ‘away’. When we throw anything away it must go somewhere. ” - Annie Leonard
The beach looked clean. But a closer investigation revealed amongst other things, small pieces of plastic, strings and wires hidden in the tide line - 30kg was the amount of ocean litter collected in 1 hour and a half by the ‘grabbers’ on the beach today!
Every first Sunday of the month volunteers get together on one of our 3 local beaches in East Sussex. During a 90min window they look for anything that doesn’t belong to the natural marine environment and collect these ‘foreign’ items in a bucket. All the findings are then checked by the GRAB team, weighed, and disposed of appropriately.
At G.R.A.B = Gather Rubbish And Bin it (who doesn’t like a good acronym?) volunteers educate people on how much litter there is in our oceans, how it affects the marine life and encourage both local and wider communities to be mindful of our use of plastic as well as the famous RRR (reuse, reduce, recycle)[1].
The first time I attended this monthly event I thought I would be looking for larger more obvious items of litter but to my surprise, at the end of my shift my bucket was full of quite tiny things like pieces of fabric, metal, wiring, bottle tops, nylon strings and wrappers.
Did you know that the Top 10 marine litter items found by the 14,527 volunteers of the Marine Conservation Society are [2]:
1. Plastic/polystyrene pieces (0-50cm) | 6. Caps & lids |
2. Glass | 7. Cotton bud sticks |
3. Cigarette stubs | 8. Fishing net (small) |
4. Packets (crisp, sweet, lolly, sandwich) | 9. Fishing line |
5. String/cord (thickness 0-1cm) | 10. Plastic/polystyrene (other) |
Well, today in the space of 1 hour I found all of them except cotton bud sticks and fishing net. As I was enjoying my exploration of Rottingdean beach, lifting dry seaweed, checking between the pebbles, I realised I had taken a plastic water bottle with me for refreshment! At home we have reusable containers of all sizes for hot and cold drinks and somehow today I forgot to take one of them and bought a plastic bottle instead! 🙄
The joy of being human!!
*** My dare to you this weekend and the rest of the summer ***
Dare to GRAB
Enjoy a GRAB walk, on the beach, in nature or even in town. Grab a bag or bucket, gloves, a litter picker, a friend or the whole family and off you go spotting whatever doesn’t seem to belong to the environment where you are.
If you don’t know where to start you can join a “Keep Britain tidy” clean-up event [3] Some of the benefits you will get might include:
Enjoying time outdoors
A very mindful experience, focusing on finding some ‘treasures’
Meeting new people or enjoying a moment to yourself
Surprising discoveries
Learning a new thing or two
Feeling part of something bigger while having fun
And the cherry on the cake: volunteering has been shown to not only contribute to a good cause (whatever your favourite one is!), it also improves volunteers' wellbeing!
Cleaning the beach is a fab first step, it won’t turn the tide on ocean pollution. The next step will be to adjust our lifestyle choices (i.e: not turn up at a beach cleaning event with a plastic bottle of water! 🙄).
So, go for it and dare to be the change you want to see in your family, community and life!
PS: To take a deeper dive into the world of marine litter impact check out the references at the bottom of the page.
Let me know how you got on with this #dare, do share your experience in the comment section.
Sign up to our newsletter to receive the next challenge directly in your mailbox.
References: [1] The Deans Volunteers - Facebook Group [2] Great British Beach Clean, Marine Conservation Society - Previous years' reports and this year's event in September. [3] Keep Britain Tidy
Other ideas: Coastal Clearance Events, South East Coast - BHASS Explore More research: Impact: International Marine Litter Research Unit, University of Plymouth
Σχόλια