THE BEACH CONSERVATION SOCIETY
Things To Care About 1)
Beach litter... at the highest level since records began
Litter is swamping our oceans and is washing up on beaches. It kills wildlife, looks disgusting, is a hazard to our health and costs millions to clear up.
disappear. Microplastic particles are now found inside filter feeding animals and amongst sand grains on our beaches.
There are nearly 2,000 items of rubbish for every kilometre on a beach. Marine wildlife gets entangled in litter and accidentally ingests it. Turtles mistake plastic bags for jellyfish and the bags block their stomachs, often leading to death from starvation. Seabirds mistake floating plastic litter for food, and over 90% of fulmars found dead around the North Sea have plastic in their stomachs. Plastic litter on beaches has increased 140% since 1994.
Litter comes from many sources - the public, fishing activities, sewage pipes and shipping, but it is all preventable.
Plastic never biodegrades. It just breaks down into small pieces but does not
Beach litter is made up of discarded objects that do not occur naturally in the marine and coastal environment. Alarmingly, over the past 15 years the amount of marine litter washingup on UK beaches has almost doubled. Typical examples of marine litter include waste from beach users, sewagerelated debris, medical waste, shipping debris and fishing waste.
Sources of marine litter*: - 40.4% from the public - 4.5% Sewage related Debris - 13.9% fishing litter - 0.7% fly tipping - 3.9% shipping - 0.2% medical waste - 36.3% non-sourced (*BCS Beachaware Survey 2012) The vast majority of marine litter is plastic, which never truly breaks down. Experts suggest plastic left in the environment will be with us in some microscopic form many thousands of years.
When in the sea, plastics can also absorb toxic chemicals, becoming increasingly harmful over time, and often entering the food chain when mistaken for food items by fish, seabirds, marine mammals and other organisms. Over 100,000 marine mammals and over 1 million seabirds die every year from ingestion of and entanglement in marine litter. Plastic debris can be found littering coastlines all across the world’s oceans, even on the most far-flung and inaccessible of beaches. Plastic is not biodegradable and will degrade slower in the marine environment than on land. A normal plastic bottle may persist for more than 450 years if left on a beach. Beach users have to be wary of injury from broken glass, rusting metal or discarded medical waste. We should also be aware that the beach is likely to suffer from sewage discharges if sewage-related debris such as cotton bud sticks or tampon applicators are present. Marine litter strewn all over a beach can also have a detrimental effect on tourism with visitors put off from using it for recreation.
2)
Unidentified Floating Object The Unidentified Floating Object (UFO) campaign calls on the public to help identify persistent, unidentified marine litter from our beaches and report their own UFOs, in the hope that BCS can trace the source of the litter and hold the polluters to account! The BCS team have already captured two types of mysterious UFO and are calling on our supporters to help identify what they are and where they might be coming from. Armed with this information BCS will be able to trace the polluter and work with them to prevent these UFO invading our beaches in future. BCS are also calling on beach users all over the UK to be vigilant for regular alien landings when on their local beaches! The campaigns team have been working hard on identifying both of our current objects and has recently discovered the name and source of the blue foam balls washing up nationwide: TAPROGGE
BALLS - used in cleaning pipes in power stations amongst other industrial systems. We are currently in dialogue with the Environment Agency on how to prevent the further escape of these balls into the marine environment. The second item BCS is seeing regularly on beaches and is having more difficulty in identifying are the blue stoppers, found regularly on Porthtowan and Perranporth beaches in Cornwall. Ear plugs have been suggested but they are too big and hard for ears. These look like bungs, but who uses them, what for and where? A new suggestion under investigation is that they may all be components of the Bead Blasting process.
3)
Return to Offender We are encouraging all our supporters to take action in 2013 to become an active part of the BCS award-winning anti beach litter campaign Return To Offender. The campaign has sent over 2000 items of identifiable marine litter found on UK beaches back to the manufacturers, challenging them to: Step up the anti-littering message on your products. Look at using less harmful packaging to ensure products can be broken down naturally without putting wildlife at risk. Promote recycling and/or reuse wherever appropriate. Support community beach litter initiatives or anti-litter projects. Since launching in 2006 the Return To Offender campaign has gone from strength to strength, along the way winning the Coast award for Best Blue Green Campaign in 2009. More recently Haribo have responded directly to the RTO campaign challenges, increasing their anti-litter messaging on packaging
by replacing the universal Litter Man icon with a far larger anti-littering icon more appropriate for their customers. With your help this campaign can continue to make a real difference to what we find on our beaches, you’re not only an environmentalist, you’re a consumer, and so these big companies will listen to what you have to say.
BCS dirty dozen Below are the worst offenders, those companies whose products we are finding the most on our precious beaches. However, our focus in 2013 will be on companies such as Pepsico UK and Bookers Ltd who have refused to take this issue seriously so far. Coca-Cola, Pepsico, Glaxosmithkline/ Lucozade, Kraft, Nestle, Tesco, Mars, United Biscuits, Carlsberg, Unilever, Booker, In Bev/Anhesuer Busch The Beach Conservation Society has joined forces with three other leading environmental charities to call for a levy on single-use bags in England, following the success of such levies in Wales and Ireland.
4)
Break the Bag Habit The Beach Conservation Society, the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), Keep Britain Tidy and Surfers Against Sewage are calling on the Government to reduce litter and waste by requiring retailers to introduce a small levy on all single-use bags. Together we have launched the Break the Bag Habit campaign. In 2011, businesses in the UK issued plastic bags at a rate of 254 a second. A total of eight billion thin-gauge plastic bags were issued during 2011, a 5.4% increase on the 7.6 billion bags issued in 2010. Over the past two years, the number of carrier bags used in England has increased despite repeated Government calls for retailers to reduce the numbers they give out. All of this net growth in the use of such plastic bags came from England, the only home nation not to have a single-use bag levy in place or to be actively seeking to implement one.
After the first year of such a scheme in Wales, charging 5p per bag, the number of single-use bags issued has fallen by between 70% and 96%, as estimated by retailers. In turn, public support for the Welsh bag levy has grown to 70%. When Ireland introduced a plastic bag levy in 2002, plastic bag use fell by 90%. Before the Irish levy plastic bags made up 5% of visible litter, afterwards it dropped to 0.32%.
5)
Beating the Bead Microplastics in our beauty products = microplastics in our sea. It seems unbelievable, but it’s true: many personal care products like scrubs and peels now contain plastic particles. So, every time we exfoliate or peel off those dead cells, we may be doing our bodies some good, but we’re giving our seas anything but a makeover. As the products are rinsed off, they go down the drain and that means
we are flushing plastic into our seas where it contributes to the ‘plastic soup’ problem. The Beat the Microbead campaign, of which BCS is a member, is asking the manufacturers of these care products to replace all plastic particles with environmentally friendly alternatives, such as anise seeds, sand, salt or coconut. These are materials that were used before plastic particles. Until they take notice, it is important that we do not use care products with plastics. You too can help to end the plastic soup in the ocean. Check the list of ingredients on the label. Plastics can appear as: Polyethylene / Polythene (PE), polypropylene (PP) or Polyethylene terephthalate (PET). Dr Sue Church, BCS Litter Policy Officer, says: “It’s incredible how many everyday products contain micro plastic beads. These find their way through our sewers and into our seas where they are easily eaten by all sorts of marine animals. Help us stop the practice of putting these microplastics in products by signing the petition and checking out products at home. This App and website
is a great resource for those who want to have plastic free products. The micro plastics in these products are so small that our sewage works cannot deal with them, so if used they are essentially washed straight out to sea.
Are there microplastics in your scrub? In October 2013 an international version of the ˜Beat the Microbead”™ App was launched, which previously had only been available to Dutch consumers. The App works by scanning the barcode of products and telling the shopper whether or not the product contains plastic microbeads. Products are divided into the categories Red, Orange and Green. Red: the product contains microbeads; Orange: the product contains microbeads but the manufacturer has pledged to stop using microbeads in the near future; Green, the product does not contain microbeads.
Download the App at www.beatthemicrobead.org
Do something. Volunteering - Help the voice for our seas get louder!
Local Groups
Our local groups are a great way to support BCS and meet like-minded people in your You can volunteer for us in lots of ways. area, who are passionate about the sea. We Have a read through these options and find presently have support groups in the South something that works for you. Whichever you East of England, North Northumberland, choose, you’ll be helping our work towards Southern Scotland, Lancashire, Plymouth clean seas and beaches, sustainable and Pembrokeshire. fisheries and wildlife protection.
Could you be a Sea Champion? Sea Champions is an exciting initiative launched in 2012 and funded by Marks & Spencer. If you have the passion and drive to help us promote our campaigns and messages at the local level, become a Sea Champion and be part of a national network of volunteers who are getting actively involved in our work.
Our beaches need YOU! Join our army of beach cleaning volunteers who are helping to combat marine litter. Visit the Beachwatch pages to find out how you can volunteer at a beach clean near you - or even organise one on your favourite beach.
International Partners A great way to help save beaches around the world. We sponsor programmes in Ghana and in Malaysia. Get in touch with our international office.
Come into our office Live near Berwick, Dunbar or Edinburgh? Why not come into to our main office and help us out - we always need a hand with data entry, packing cuddly turtles, sending out letters and filing. Even a couple of hours a month would really make a big difference. Get in touch to find out more.
If you feel you have a particular skill and would like to volunteer some of your time, please get in contact with us to discuss the many options available. Whatever you do, we appreciate your help! The Beach Conservation Society Half-Moon Cottage Torness Beach Dunbar East Lothian EH42 1QU
Connect to our partner websites. http://www.sas.org.uk/ http://www.mcsuk.org/