Third plastic clean-up of the year.

This one today was a bit of a mini clean-up in the Cliffe Creek area at the top end over the seawall looking across to Tilbury.

This time I enlisted the 1st New Barn Scout Group. This was not going to be easy as we were focussing on the old landing stage where a large amount of small items had accumulated on the tide line.

I gave a mini-briefing regarding safety etc and hygiene, emphasising, of course, the danger of Weils Disease, interesting to note that one of the groups' sons had actually contracted it whilst white water rafting, so it is not as uncommon as we imagine!  

So spread over a large area it's quite labour intensive and can be difficult to keep going as it takes such a long time to make a noticeable difference. As can be seen, it's all the usual suspects, bottle tops, straws and cotton bud stems. Amongst these were lighters, decaying plastic shopping bags and bizarrely a plastic urine drainage bag which understandably younger members described as 'Gross'!

All these things should never have made their way into the water, many of the smaller items must be being flushed down the toilet and not filtered out at the sewerage works.

So this after all that hard work, here is a small cleansed sample patch, however, dig a little below the surface and it is really still there buried.

My next clean-up will be in a month or two, so keep an eye out on the blog for details of where and when.

Here are the 'Plastic pickers' from left to right, Colin Campbell, Harry Clisby, Ferdie Wilkinson, Alice Bullimore, Rachel Pennington, Sally and Alan Clisby.

My thanks also to Ruth and Lucy of RSPB Northward Hill Reserve for help on the day and Julian Nash and Will Tofts for permission to do this, again thanks to 1st New Barn Scout Group for their participation.

My thanks as usual to Medway Norse and Pindens for supplying the equipment and skip.