Cromwell Polythene Team Finds 2500 Objects in 100m Area of Beach : Beach Cleaning Exercise for Recycle Week Highlights Plastic Litter Problems
Cromwell Polythene has undertaken a beach cleaning and litter surveying programme to mark Recycle Week, which started today and runs until 1 October. Results indicate recycling on the go needs improvement.
‘Recycling – It’s Worth It!’ is the message being shared for Recycle Week, so a team of 24 volunteers from Cromwell Polythene, took to their local beach at Filey on the North Yorkshire coast to measure the impact of waste and champion community recycling best practice.
The company, which specialises in the responsible sourcing and distribution of polythene products, noted that as well as being a waste resources that could be re-used or recycled, beach litter is a threat to marine wildlife, tourism and the fishing industry.
The team, which supplies polythene products to aid recycling, worked alongside organisers, the Marine Conservation Society and volunteers from the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust’s Living Seas Centre, to pick and mark collections of litter found on the beach. Unfortunately, the variety and condition of litter collected meant that it was not viable to recycle (too dirty or degraded).
In most cases, with hard plastics, the items could have been recycled if they had been placed for recycling immediately after use.
Results from Cromwell Polythene’s Recycle Week collection, conducted over a 100 metre radius of the beach showed the following levels of rubbish:
243 plastic/polythene items including bottles, caps, cups, packets and party poppers. The majority of items were fragments of larger pieces. Only one plastic bag was recovered.
19 rubber items including bits of balloon, pieces of dog balls and part of a flip flop
4 cloth items including sacking, shoe lace and knickers
44 paper and cardboard items including cartons, cigarette packets and cups
24 wood items including cork, lolly sticks and chip forks
14 metal items including cans, caps and foil wrappers
20 glass items all from glass bottles
6 items of pottery
8 sanitary items including wet wipes, flossers and plasters
And last but not least… 4 bagged dog poos!
However, the company said that this is just the tip of the iceberg, with annual figures indicating there are nearly 2500 items of rubbish for every kilometre on a beach*. This litters comes from many sources – the public, fishing activities, sewage pipes and shipping, but it is all preventable.
“Our beach clean to mark Recycle Week revealed all manner of rubbish including wet wipes, metals, plastics and piping. It was interesting to see the quantity and variety of materials which society considers it’s OK to carelessly discard as litter,” said Cromwell Polythene’s managing director James Lee.
“We are striving to help our economy move away from the traditional linear model of using then disposing of these materials, to a more efficient system that retains the value of resources and keeps them circulating in the economy for longer,” he continued.
However, he added that the real issue is not with plastics themselves, but littering itself, which is a social behaviour problem.
“Measures like the expansion of recycling initiatives in public spaces will help more people to be able to recycle on the go,” he concluded.
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