5 June 2022

Plastic-free beaches

We donate 100% of our end of year profits to UK conservation projects.

As a team we decided that last year’s profits will primarily be used to help remove plastic from the Cornish coast. We are not the first people to think of doing this. We’ll be working with some amazing businesses and individuals to get the job done. Some of these people have been working hard at this for years, but in many cases lack the resources or publicity to be able to maximise their effectiveness. Hopefully this is where we can help.

Despite increasing public awareness plastic pollution remains a serious issue in Cornwall (and elsewhere). After a brief respite during the Covid lockdowns it is on the rise once again, as as the late Spring half term marks the start of what we affectionately call “Silly Season” down here we can already see the amount of litter in the dunes, on the beach and in the sea start to rise. Now we have a new character on the scene in the form of single use face masks. Surfers Against Sewage – who are based just down the road from us on the North Cornish coast – estimate that there are approximately 269,000 tonnes of plastic in the sea. It gets there by being left on the beach, washed down rivers, flushed down toilets or cast overboard from ocean vessels. This means there is a wide scale of plastics to be dealt with, from fishing nets that require a group of people to pull out of the beach to microplastics that need to be sieved out of sand to be seen. There is one thing these pieces all have in common though – they will take many lifetimes to disappear on their own, and even when they do they just break down in to smaller pieces which can be harmful in other ways. When you add to this the fact that less than 10% of everyday plastic in the UK is recycled the need for action is clear.

On the 25th of June we’ll be hosting our first beach clean at the beautiful Holywell Bay in tandem with some great people. We’ll be teaming up with One Bag Beach Clean, a charity who are veterans of this scene and who promote litter free beaches across the county. Waterhaul are supplying their rather natty litter pickers made out of recycled ocean plastic (check out their sunglasses too) while the fabulous Gorse Bakery will be supplying sustenance while we go about our clean. We’ll also be supplying sieves and small trowels so that children can get involved, sieving for microplastics in the sand and rock pools.

We’d love it if you could get involved. Register for a free ticket here and join us for a morning of plastic removal on one of Cornwall’s finest beaches. Bring along your friends, family, kids… anyone! In return for your time we’ll send you away with a lovely pastry and a tote bag for your own beach cleans in future.

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