Drowning Our Oceans

Happy new year everyone! Just a small update on our situation in case anyone was wondering:)

#beachcleanup Day 142🌊 Bringing a re-usable bag to do your shopping is one of the simplest ways to reducing your dependency on plastic. One million of them are used every minute globally so it is definitely a good place to start!

#beachcleanup Day 141🌊 Found a bit of everything today; plastic bags, bottles, fishing net, food wrappers and the usual solo bottle caps. Would be a nice surprise to have just one day without finding rubbish scattered across the beach... unlikely as long as humans are around.

@FightThePlastic @CocaCola @Britvic @Unilever @PepsiCo Maybe if there was a deposit to be paid by the consumer fewer would end up loose out in nature? Think re-usable is the habit we need to encourage

@BlueLifeConnect @CocaCola @Britvic @Unilever @PepsiCo Definitely in need of a bottle deposit+return scheme in the UK, others had done it for years with great success. Really not sure why we have failed to adapt in this respect.

#beachcleanup Day 140 Bottles, bottles, bottles. So many different brands but the majority are owned by jut a small handful of companies. @CocaCola @Britvic @Unilever @PepsiCo These businesses create 100s of billions of plastic bottles annually and less than half are recycled:(

#beachcleanup Day 139🌊 Quite a selection of single-use cups today. In the UK we use 2.5 billion disposable coffee cups alone annually, and less than 1% are recycled! Loads of coffee shops offer a discount if you bring your own cup, just another reason to get a re-usable one!

#beachcleanup Day 138🌊 Was sure these plastic cups belonged to a bar just up the beach so I brought them back, worth it to see the surprised look on the manager's face. All in all not too busy, just more obscure small pieces and a very weird key ring.

#beachcleanup Day 137🌊 Down at the far end of the beach today, almost completely deserted since summer ended but there is still plastic to be found everywhere. Found a Halloween @fanta bottle, sad to think it was lying there for up to a month without being picked up.

#beachcleanup Day 136🌊 The weather has been very strange today, woke up to a dusting of snow and then the sun decided to come out and play. Found plastic bags, a bottle and a beer can ring, as well as a few random shards of plastic brought in by the waves.

@arzydel Done:-)

#beachcleanup Day 135 More @CocaCola Forgot to take a pic but the cap had 'please recycle this bottle' written on it, as if that makes up for being one of the world's biggest polluters of single-use plastic! They produce 110 billion plastic bottles each year. #NotGoodEnough

Sperm whale washed up in Sulawesi had 1000 pieces of plastic in its stomach, including flip-flops, bottles, bags and 115 drinking cups #plasticfree #INEOSvTHEPEOPLE theguardian.com/environment/20…

#beachcleanup Day 134 Found our first @Waitrose bag. They've stopped giving away disposable cups in their cafes but we need extensive action to cut down on all excessive packaging not just publicity stunts! UK supermarkets generate 800,000 tonnes of plastic packaging annually

@FightThePlastic @oceanspirouette Took me a while but I cut all this tackle out of the Reef about 6' down yesterday afternoon, could have really snarled up a Turtle, wicked big hook

#beachcleanup Day 133🌊 Found a thick chunk of rope today, for some reason attached to a metal bar. I know this sounds weird but it smelt strongly of nail polish remover! Also stumbled upon the first piece of cling film in a while, and another chewed up tennis ball.

During this time they can be ingested by all manner of marine life, from whales and dolphins to turtles, blocking their digestive system and causing starvation. Some marine creatures also die from entanglement in the string:(

#beachcleanup Day 132🌊 Found another balloon attached to a plastic string today. Luckily it didn't quite reach the ocean. Although most are labelled as 'biodegradable', they can still take months or years to break down as they require certain conditions to properly decompose.