HELPING TO CLEAN UP OUR COAST AND COUNTRYSIDE
This weekend saw an organised litter pick in and around the small seaside town of Watchet. A small group of volunteers turned out on a sunny afternoon to help and and make the streets litter free with plenty of cigarette butts to collect which many don't see as litter but with the filter containing plastic and toxins, would be harmful to our sea life as they make their short journey down a land drain and into the Bristol Channel. Flower beds and other vegetation can hide other litter including bottles, cans and other general waste including a crisp packet we found dating b ack 30 years to 1992. After a couple of hours spent collecting the litter and sorting it for recycling, the town looked a lot tidier than it did before we arrived!
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With the Great British Spring Clean now underway, my weekend, which began with a sunrise beach clean, continued with litter picks along the country lanes around the parish of Old Cleeve and ending the weekend with a litter pick at sunset on North Hill. It was the usual find of bottles, cans and fast food litter along the roadside and parking areas with very little on footpaths. The photo below shows what I collected including an old tyre. All the litter was sorted and recycled where possible.
A couple of days later, I returned to the same area for a walk not planning to do a litter pick (although I always carry a bag with me for any litter I find) and was sad to find more cans and bottles plus a roll of used chain link fencing and a rusty metal stake. All was removed and taken to the local recycling centre. This morning, my alarm was set for 5:00 for an early morning beach clean. I arrived at Minehead Warren Road Car Park where all was quiet and just a couple of camper vans parked up overnight. I headed east along the shoreline and soon found the first plastic bottle washed up on the tide and more items as I went along and within 20 minutes, I had already had the first bag filled. A bit further and there was the remains of somebody's barbecue with cans, bags and items of clothing. A little after 6am, the morning sun rose over the Bristol Channel promising another glorious day ahead. With plenty to carry, I headed back to the car where I met a worker of idVerde emptying the litter bins and said he would take it away for me and thanked me for doing it. It was a lovely way to begin the day and made my 7am start at work so much easier! I'll be doing plenty more litter picks over the coming weeks with beach cleans planned as follows: Saturday 2nd April at Watchet 2pm - 4pm; Sunday 3rd April at Minehead 2pm - 4pm; Saturday 9th April 10am - 11am; Sunday 10th April 10am - Noon. I'm hoping to visit other sites across West Somerset and Exmoor and with the Easter holiday coming up and a few days off work, I shall be heading further afield with litter picks planned in Epping Forest and Hampstead Heath.
Firstly, may I take this opportunity to wish everyone a happy new year. It would be lovely to think it will be a good year for our environment but I'm not holding my breath! As long as we try and 'do our bit', it does make a difference.
I spent my New Year on Lundy Island which was wonderful and I made the most of my time there exploring the island in it's winter state and enjoying some stormy seas. Staying at 'Tibbetts' cottage (the most remote cottage on the island) meant we gave up the luxury of electricity and mains water. Along with this, the lack of mobile phone signal, it really is like going back in time. Water is pumped from a well which shouldn't be drunk without being boiled first. Bottled water is supplied if needed which we avoided doing. Bottled gas supplies the cooker, fridge and hot water boiler although the pilot light kept being blown out by the windy weather so had to rely on boiling a kettle. There is a coal fire, blankets and hot water bottles to keep warm. Contact with the outside world was by a little transistor radio I took with me. There are plenty of board games and jigsaw puzzles for the evenings. It was wonderful! I'm pleased to say litter was something I could forget about while I was there although I did rescue a crisp packet and couple of sweet wrappers which I'm hoping was accidental litter which perhaps blew out of someone's pocket. Best to put these things into a zipped pocket which you don't need to access until back inside somewhere sheltered. Fast forward to this weekend, I was pleased to be involved in two beach clean events. The first was from Minehead to Dunster Beach where around 100 people were involved in picking up litter along the coastline. The weather was perfect which encouraged people to get out and help. The second event was further up the coast at Watchet where a further 50+ people turned up to help tidy up the coastline and through the town as well. All the litter collected over the weekend is being recycled where possible with a small percentage having to go to landfill. All of the hard plastics including plastic bottles will go towards the Ocean Recovery Project which I hope to have news on next month when I know what it will be made into. Over the next week, I'm hoping to get down to Bossington and Porlock Weir then up the coast near Hinkley Point to see what the winter weather has washed up on the coastline there. This weekend, I was out litter picking again spending a couple of hours on North Hill where there was plenty of food and drink litter along with spent fireworks in various locations but all in parking areas. I also found various empty firework selection boxes and plastic rocket launchers. All this must have been terrifying for the resident Exmoor Ponies and other wildlife on the hill. On Sunday, after a morning in the garden, I went down to Blue Anchor and walked along to Dunster Beach where I started my beach clean on the walk back. Not a large quantity but what I did collect was mostly small pieces of plastic, especially shards of plastic cups which I found every few steps. This is so time consuming to collect so I for one will be pleased when plastic cups and cutlery are banned which was announced a couple of days ago.
After a very busy week at school with the children learning lots about the environment, it was rewarding to have an article in this week's West Somerset Free Press about what we've been up to. Yesterday, I received my 'Coastal Champion Award' in the post from Somerset Wildlife Trust. I have also received an invitation from Somerset County Council as I have been nominated for the 'Chair Award for Service to the Community' which takes place later this month.
While world leaders are meeting in Glasgow talking about what can be done to help our planet's future, myself and many others are continuing to try and make a difference to our environment. While promises are being made to reduce carbon emissions, in reality, a change of government can instantly break those promises as we have seen before.
We all need to encourage others to join the fight for our planet and our children's future. This weekend, I have been busy out on the beach again and this evening was at Bossington Beach in Porlock Bay where I collected plenty of plastic bottles, a plastic chemical container and a large piece of thermal insulation all washed up on the tide. I had to stop as the daylight had gone and I couldn't see what was there anymore! This week, I will be talking to the children at school about Climate Change including saving energy as part of 'Switch Off Fortnight' which starts tomorrow. My lesson will begin with each child having a piece of A4 paper and guessing how many times it will fold which I'm sure most of you know is 7. I will then ask them to guess how many times (if it were possible) would you need to fold it to equal the diameter of the earth. The answer is 37. This will take me nicely into my subject about our planet and see if they know if and why it is talked about in the news at present. I took a photo of the school's electric meter last Monday so will take them to the meter tomorrow to take a new reading. We will go back to class and work out the difference of how much electricity has been used and explain that we need to encourage everyone in school to save energy and see how much we can reduce it by next Monday and again the Monday after that. It is also important for them to know why it's important to explain how this helps our planet. I'll ask them to find out how many folds of paper it takes to reach the moon etc., by next Monday! Another thing I'm doing in my volunteering role at school is a new woodland project. The Steam Coast Trail is a path/cycle route near the school which is fairly new but lacks trees. As part of our Woodland Trust and Eco-Schools education, I have ordered enough trees for every child to plant a tree which will be numbered and recorded in a book with their name alongside. In years to come as these trees mature, they will create a green canopy and the children will grow up and be able to tell their children and grandchildren how they planted them in the autumn of 2021! With lots of other ideas lined up, I hope it will all help to make a difference to everyone's future. My weekend started with attending (online) the Somerset Brilliant Coast Conference which was hosted by Mark Ward of Somerset Wildlife Trust. It was a wonderful 3 hours of speakers who were full of information about our important coastline and some great photography too. At the end of the morning, I was proud to receive an award of 'Coastal Community Champion' for Recognition of the tireless work over the years helping to keep our coast clean.
After a quick snack, I was off to meet a trustee of The Steam Coast Trail - a fairly new cycle route for everyone from the railway bridge at Dragon's Cross to Washford. Being the Eco-School Lead at Old Cleeve First School, I have been looking for a site for each child at the school to plant a tree for The Woodland Trust's 'Queen's Jubilee Green Canopy Project'. We agreed a piece of land to plant 105 saplings and 25 hedging plants which will arrive in the next couple of weeks in time for National Tree Planting Week. As the trees grow with the children, one day the trees will create a canopy over the path which they can explain to their children and grandchildren that they planted the woodland. If agreed with the adjoining landowner, this is a project which will hopefully continue each year to increase the amount of trees along this area. Next, I headed down to the coast at Porlock Weir for a 2 hour beach clean as I've not been there for a while though I know others have been doing their bit to help. I collected just over a sackful of plastic washed up on the tide but a few fishing bait bags sadly left behind by anglers. On Sunday morning, I had to drive to Bridgwater to buy some paint for the house which I'm unable to buy locally so decided I could offset my travel by stopping off at Stolford (East of Hinkley Point) to do another 2 hour beach clean. The above photo shows some of what I found including a large plastic pallet which unfortunately was at the furthest point of my walk after I had nearly filled my second bag of rubbish. I spotted a 3 metre length of plastic tube which I put through the pallet and managed to drag it along the pebbles with one of the sacks on while I carried the other, a cone and a few other bits I found as I headed back to the car. I have quite a few bags of beach waste at home now which I really need to sort through and separate the hard plastics for another project run by Keep Britain Tidy where the plastic will be taken away for recycling which I'll write about when I know more about it! This has been a very busy weekend for me as I spent most of my time doing beach cleans as part of World Clean Up Day. As a member of Plastic Free Communities in West Somerset, there were organised beach cleans at Minehead (Saturday morning) and Watchet (Sunday morning) which I joined in with and each day had a good turnout of volunteers willing to help out. Both events started with a 100m sweep of a section of beach to look for all types of litter and micro plastics as well as a general litter pick of the local area. As always, there was plenty to collect, especially cigarette butts where the majority of smokers do not realise how damaging the discarded cigarette is to the marine environment.
On Saturday afternoon, I made my first ever trip to Stolford Beach to see what litter I might find there. Once on the beach, immediately I found plenty of plastic and a different type of litter I'm used to finding. A couple of large cable ties but then so many more plus two pairs of safety goggles and remains of a tape measure. There were other items which seem more connected to the construction industry which I don't normally find on the West Somerset coastline. It maybe a coincidence but with Hinkley Point just a mile down the coast from here, I guess that might be the problem. I struggled back to the car with my first haul before going back to get a couple of other pieces I wanted to get before the high tide took them away. I'm hoping to get back there next weekend to continue along the coast from where I left off. Today (Sunday) after lunch, I decided to have an afternoon walk at Dunster Beach along towards Minehead. I didn't plan it to be a beach clean so didn't take my litter picking equipment but all the same, made sure I put a couple of sacks in my pocket. I walked along the edge of the incoming tide picking up a plastic bottle as I walked down the pebble bank. a bit further on, I saw spotted something floating in on the tide and saw it was a worker's helmet. I had to wade in to get it so carried it along with me towards Minehead and kept seeing other items along the high tide mark o on my return had to get a sack from my pocket and do an unplanned litter pick. Another thing I found was a huge amount of tangled fishing line which I collected up. By the time I got back to Dunster Beach, I had a sack full of plastic which will be sorted and recycled by the children at school in their marine environment study coming up in a couple of weeks. |
AuthorBorn in West Somerset, I have always been proud of where I live and want everyone else to enjoy it too! Archives
September 2022
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