Big Beach Clean

Bonjour and Hello eco-friendly readers

How have you been? Hope you're all well.
I have been rather busy as of late, sorting out lots of forms and paperwork as well as finding new challenges and editing the ridiculous amount of footage I've got (they will be published soon I promise).
A few weekends ago I got the opportunity to do something a little bit different and very rewarding with my time. With rain macs, wellies, and gloves at the ready, I joined a group of people on a Beach Clean and Film screening organised by my good pal Lucy in association with Raleigh International. For those of you who don't know Lucy; she is often my inspiration to continue to do good things and help good causes, and this activity was no exception. 

We all know the oceans are filled with rubbish and debris, most of which gradually ends up on our shores, coastlines and affects not only the marine life but also animals and Humans on land too. Add that to the empty packets and bottles the litterbugs of this world drop without a care for conservation, it's no wonder people start to avoid beaches and complain that our beautiful British seasides look more like dumps. Unfortunately, after the aesthetic of a beach is restored some people simply stop caring or 'forget' and the litterbug cycle begins once more.

Since giving up using plastic bags for Lent (I must say I was once more inspired by Lucy to do this) I now always carry a bag for life on me or just carry my purchased items in hand and can't actually remember the last time I used or reached for a plastic carrier bag. I thought this was the good deed against plastic that would help save the world. If we all used bags for life or canvas bags, it could eliminate a lot of plastic waste.

I was shocked by just how much rubbish we found: bottles, cans, wrappers, bottle tops, a ridiculous amount of plastic lolly sticks, face/baby wipes, old fishing equipment, abandoned children's toys and empty packaging for miscellaneous items. For a beach that looked relatively clean at first glance, (with fancy beach huts and viewing benches) this beach was strewn with litter.

After filling our bin bags (made out of recycled plastic, might I add), and getting drenched in sea salt spray, rain and covered in sand (in places one should not get covered in the sand whilst fully clothed), we loaded the bin bags -to sort into recycling later on- into the car and traveled back to Lucy's humble abode for hot chocolate, homemade snacks, and a documentary viewing.

'A Plastic Ocean' is available currently on Netflix; I was stunned at this documentary! We've all seen the viral posts about marine life trapped in plastic and old fishing gear but this documentary really started to put matters into perspective. We produce plastic at an alarming rate and a lot of it isn't recyclable, it finds its way into the oceans, the marine life and then into our seafood diets and even our tap water! Simple tasks like making sure you buy recycled and recyclable items rather than single use plastic goes a long long way. We don't want our planet ending up looking like the film WALL-E™, do we? That plastic you throw away doesn't just disappear, the technologies to correctly dispose and recycle waste are out there, we just need to start using them, and showing companies we want them to use them by changing our consumption patterns.

If walking about in nature and picking up other people's debris is not for you, why not sit in and watch this documentary? It doesn't take too much of your time and it may help you to make that decision to recycle more and use recyclable items, a simple decision that will help our little blue planet in the long run. Instead of putting that bottle you've just drunk in the bin, why not hold onto it for a minute more whilst you look for a recycling bin? It's these little gestures that will make a significant difference to our wildlife, environment and in turn our own health.

I cannot Thank my good friend, Lucy enough for opening my eyes to this situation, thanks to her I now think twice about my own plastic consumption and find myself picking up the odd pieces of litter and popping them into recycling. After the beach clean, I felt so satisfied and proud that we had made a difference to our planet, It's a feel-good feeling that can only be achieved when being altruistic. I'm so proud of our little eco-warrior and thought I'd bring a little more awareness about this silly human-made product that is polluting our planet. Any gesture big or small will go such a long way, and hopefully soon those horrible viral videos of our marine life suffering from polluted water and single us plastic will be a thing of the past.

The average time to read this blog post is 00:03:35 and in this time about 1,191,750 lbs (≈ 540,568.7 kg) of plastic has been produced, an average of 6 million plastic bags have been used and about 167,870 lbs  (≈ 76,144.6 kg)of plastic made its way into our oceans.

Thanks for Reading
xo