The Friends of Burnham-On-Sea Beach have urged local residents not to flush plastic cotton buds down toilets because increasing numbers of them are being washed up on local beaches.
The group of volunteers held their latest beach clean-up in Burnham-On-Sea on Saturday and found hundreds of the plastic buds.
While local sewerage infrastructure collects and treats huge amount of waste water each day, the systems are not designed to remove small plastic items such as plastic buds, which can kill marine animals and birds that swallow them.
Although most big retailers have switched to biodegradable paper-stemmed buds, imported plastic brands continue to be sold by smaller outlets.
“A lot of plastic stems from cotton buds were recovered on Saturday, suggesting that many people still flush them down the loo, and it is time that people stopped buying cotton buds with plastic stems,” organiser Mark Hollidge told Burnham-On-Sea.com.
He added: “The high tides and strong winds of recent weeks ensured that there was a lot of work for us to do.”
“The eager volunteers were not deterred by the wet weather as they tackled the stockpile of rubbish that had become stranded on the banks of the River Brue.”
“Fortunately, 32 volunteers were on hand to make short work of it. Of those 32, over half were people having a go for the first time and approximately 30 bin bags of rubbish were collected. We thank everyone who came along.”
