No not the result from the American election, or X factor or Strictly Come Dancing, but the results from the Great British Beach Clean! On Saturday 17 September 2016 many volunteers strolled down to the rather blustery beach at Minsmere to take part in the Great British Beach Clean.
We conducted the 200m survey on the main Minsmere beach from the end of North Wall towards the sluice. I was a bit doubtful as to how much rubbish we would manage to find on a piece of beach that is frequently walked by many nature enthusiasts and at a glance looks perfectly clean.
But with a closer look there was still plenty of rubbish to be found! A staggering 624 items were found in total in the 200m stretch surveyed, an astounding amount in such a small area. 80.1% of the rubbish collected was plastic or polystyrene. The effect these items can have on the wildlife that uses the beach habitat can be life threatening. Plastic can be misidentified by animals as their food source and ingested. This can in itself cause damage but the animal can also become tangled or attached to the item which therefore hinders its movement and ultimately its survival.
The next highest percentage of rubbish items found were metal based. A whopping 8.7% of items found in our survey area were metal. The damage that these metal items can cause once they have been corroded by the sea goes without saying. Paper and cardboard contributed to the next highest category of rubbish at 2.4%.
It probably doesn’t surprise you that when the sources of the rubbish items were looked into 34.5% of rubbish had come from a public source. 29.6% was non-sourced and the third highest contributor was fishing. After the weekend of the Great British Beach Clean I was left feeling very content that Minsmere’s beaches were freed of rubbish and the wildlife here would not have to suffer the horrible incidents that can result from litter on beaches. How wrong I was. Literally a few days after the beach clean the following was put on my desk after it had been removed from a struggling gull by a couple of visitors.
My contented feeling was crushed and was crushed further when I was informed that four more of these monstrosities were left in a bag at the Visitor Centre yesterday obviously picked up by some of our lovely visitors who wanted us to be aware of them. It is great that people are still carrying on the great work since this weekend, well done and thank you!
I still feel very proud of the work that the volunteers did at The Great British Beach Clean but I also have a strong aspiration to make more people aware of the dangers of rubbish on beaches and to take part in next year’s Great British Beach Clean!