Next time you rinse out your empty plastic milk bottle don’t drop it in the recycling bin, drop it off at Bempton Cliffs.
The team at the award-winning RSPB nature reserve is currently getting creative and turning bottles into birds in a bid to raise awareness of both its gannet colony and the state of the ocean.
Over the next few weeks, staff and volunteers are going to be making a sky full of plastic birds – with a little help from visitors.
Visitor Experience Manager, Sarah Aitken, explained:
‘People don’t realise that our cliffs are home to the UK’s largest seabird, the gannet, or that we’re the country’s largest mainland gannet colony. So we came up with the idea of trying to recreate it, bird for bird, within the Seabird Centre.’
It’s a massive task – some 30,000 gannets nest on the cliffs during the breeding season. So the team is looking for extra pairs of hands to produce the plastic birds and turning to the public for help.
Sarah added:
‘The birds are easy to make and instructions can be found via a link on our Facebook page. We’d love as many people as possible to make one and write their name on a ‘wing’. Each and every one we receive will be added to the flock hanging from the Seabird Centre ceiling’.
The use of the bottles not only highlights the gannets but also helps start conversations about their plight.
Sarah continued:
‘Like all seabirds, gannets suffer from the impact of the 8 million tons of plastic waste that enter the ocean each year. But this is a great way of using waste material in a positive way. And, of course, when we take down the ‘colony’, we’ll simply recycle the ‘birds’.
If you’d like to make a plastic bird, full instructions can be found here: https://www.edenproject.com/learn/for-everyone/how-to-recycle-a-milk-carton-into-a-beautiful-bird
Anyone dropping off a bottle bird is encouraged to write their name on the ‘bird’s’ wing - and stake their claim in (hopefully) the UK's largest mainland milk bottle bird colony.