This is another guest blog from our fantastic Warden Jamie:
On Thursday 7 November over 40 members of the public and a whole host of Rainham volunteers headed out on to the foreshore of the River Thames for our Plastic Pollution Beach Clean.
We were lucky with the day - the sun was shining and a group of people turned up to give us a hand. After checking in with Paul we headed out onto the foreshore.
With the exceptionally high tides recently a huge amount of rubbish has washed up on the foreshore of the Thames on the River Wall section of the reserve.
The group, litter pickers and bags in hand, did a great job clearing up many bags full of rubbish. I think about 90% of the collected was plastic.
Once the bags were filled we put them into our trailer and took it down to the skip.
In a little over two hours, the team of 55 volunteers filled 55 bags of general plastic waste (including innumerable bottle tops and cotton bud sticks) and 37 bags of plastic bottles. We also removed 29 other large items, including a road sign and a life buoy case. This was a fantastic effort by everyone involved, and the turn out far exceeded our expectations, so thank you again.
You can see above the filled 12 yard skip. The skip was provided by Ahern - they are a fantastic comprehensive waste management service for East London and South Essex.
Not only do they hire skips - once they collect it they will then separate and recycle appropriately, they have:
Brilliant.
Looking much better.
We will be running more of these beach cleans - keep an eye here on the blog or our events listings for details.
If you are interested in this type of event - keep an eye out for a couple of reedbed clearance days (which should be on the blog later today).
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Thank you to Paul and Phil for helping get ready for and running the event, and a huge thank to to everyone that came along to help.
Thank you to John Humble who took all of these photos.
Thank you everyone!
We couldn't have done this with out the help of SC Johnson. RSPB and SC Johnson are working together to take action on the issue of marine plastics through a programme reaching over 300,000 people in 2019 and 2020. This work is possible due to their generous support.
I would like to take this opportunity to say a big thank you to Jamie for all his hard work putting the event together and arranging it all!
well done everyone!