Plastic bag litter falls by 80% on beaches over a decade, seaside clean-ups show

A four-fifths drop in carrier bags has been recorded on beaches in the past decade, campaigners said as they urged more action to tackle litter affecting the seas and coasts.

The Marine Conservation Society (MCS) said its beach clean programme has recorded an average drop of 80% in the number of plastic bags found per 100 metres of beach over the last 10 years, as charges for single use carrier bags have helped reduce their use.

The charity is also hoping to see a reduction in litter such as single use plastic cutlery, polystyrene cups, balloon sticks and food containers on beaches after bans in England, Wales and Scotland over the past two years.

But nine out of 10 beach litter items are plastic, and drinks-related litter, such as bottles, cans and lids, were found on 97% of UK beaches during the clean-ups last year, the data from the beach cleans show.

So the MCS is calling for the new Government to press ahead with an all-inclusive “deposit return scheme”, with charges on drinks containers that are refunded when they are returned for recycling.

The charity carries out beach-cleaning initiatives all year, but runs the Great British Beach Clean each September, with the surveys from volunteers contributing a third of the data it gathers on litter on beaches.

The MCS launched the build-up to this year’s Great British Beach Clean with an event on Brighton Beach, where volunteers and campaigners joined comedian, presenter and MCS ambassador Zoe Lyons for a litter-picking survey.

The survey, which has been running since 1994, involves volunteers recording all litter they find within a 100-metre stretch of beach.

Even on the beach at Brighton, which is regularly cleaned, volunteers were picking up rubbish including drinks lids and bottle caps, plastic packaging, tissues and clothing.

Lyons, who lives in Hove, said she was “so lucky to live by the sea” and enjoyed the beach every day, but said she was aware of how it was “used and misused” every day.

The comedian, who has taken part in a number of beach cleans, said people could have an impact by getting involved.

“It is a very tiny act of making a positive environmental impact, it’s a very small thing that hopefully, visually, you can see it makes an impact.

“But also I think in a world where people just feel overwhelmed by a lot of it, there’s a lot of bad news, a lot of environmental doom and gloom, to the point where people get environmental fatigue.

“So just doing a small act just breaks through that feeling of hopelessness,” she said.

She also said the public can push governments and supermarkets to do better on reducing waste, such as cutting out excess packaging.

“I’m sick of buying cucumbers that are packaged in their own anoraks, they don’t need anoraks, they’re cucumbers – or two avocados in their own little kayak,” she said.

And she urged the Government to hold water companies to account to tackle the sewage crisis hitting the UK’s coasts and waters.

“Five years ago this was a blue flag beach, you’d never think of checking an app before you went for a dip, now you’re doing a turd count.

“This is a developed country and it’s just not on,” she said.

Lizzie Price, UK beachwatch manager at the MCS, said part of the value of the data gathered by beach cleans is it can highlight “hotspots” of rubbish, such as period products, wet wipes and cotton bud sticks that show where untreated sewage pollution is a particular problem, and help drive action.

And she said: “Collecting the data every single time is really vital for us to push for change and having that robust legacy of data for 30 years now means we can really explain the problem.

“We’ve seen an 80% drop in plastic bags on our beaches, and we’re now starting to see a drop in plastic cotton bud sticks, a drop in cutlery, so any of the policies they’ve put in are starting to see a positive effect of the reduction on our beaches.

“It allows us to then say these work, and now there’s other single use items that we’re finding that we also want to see change to, things like drinks litter.”

She said the MCS now wanted to see the deposit return scheme – which has a planned introduction date of 2027 – to be implemented and to include glass bottles, which she said are “incredible harmful to humans when they break down but also harmful to the marine life as well out there”.

She added: “We must move quicker towards a society that repairs, reuses and recycles.”

More than 100 beach cleans have already been organised to take place across the UK during the Great British Beach Clean, from Bude in Cornwall to Aikerness in the Orkney Islands.

The beach clean, which is sponsored by Cully and Sully Soup, runs from September 20-29, and to find out more information people can visit: www.mcsuk.org/beach-cleans