A Burnham-On-Sea beach clean has been carried out by members of a group that teaches children about nature and the environment.
Vicky Whitehead and friends from ‘Twitch and the Witch’Â launched the clean-up to remove rubbish that has been washed up along the beach following recent high tides.
“It is heartbreaking to see how much rubbish is floating around our oceans, washing up on our beaches or worse, harming sea life,” she told Burnham-On-Sea.com. “We all have a responsibility to help clear up the mess humans have made.”
“We decided to take part in the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) beach clean and litter survey. This is a global survey to track where, in the world, and what, is getting washed up on our beaches.”
“We registered our event, adopted a stretch of our local beach that hadn’t been logged in a survey for some time.”
“2020 has not been the most usual year and we had to keep a close watch on the latest Covid updates to see whether the clean could go ahead.”
“Eventually, due to comments made on our Facebook event post and private messages about cancelling it, we decided it was probably best if we did the survey ourselves but kept the event low key and not invite the general public to join us.”
“We were kindly lent litter pickers, high viz jackets and a sharps bucket from Sedgemoor Council and we headed off down the beach with our gloves and clipboards.”
“We were joined by a couple of friends and, sticking to social distancing regulations, we set about picking up all the litter we could find and recording it on a tally chart provided by the MCS.”
“We mostly found various bits of plastic, large metal bolts and nails and pieces of broken glass. We were pleasantly surprised that we didn’t find any face masks and only found one surgical glove. Our fear had been that there would be an increase in these items, due to the pandemic, as we have seen on Facebook posts and other beach cleans.”
“There were a few slightly more unusual items, such as a large beach towel, a rock shaped in a V for Vix and a brand new heart shaped sign, saying Love. We like to think that was a sign from the beach, thanking us for doing our bit to help clean up. We weighed our rubbish and it came to 8.16kg!”
