Felixstowe: Beach clean will help experts to identify polluters spoiling our shores

Volunteers were out in force at the weekend as they cleaned beaches all along Suffolk’s coast as part of a national project to gather information on rubbish washed ashore and identify the polluters.

The annual Beachwatch campaign gives experts an indepth understanding of the state of the shores – and helps to raise awareness of little left on the beach and in the sea which threatens wildlife and habitat.

Animals such as whales, turtles, fish and seabirds frequently become entangled in marine litter, and many often die as a result.

Teams took part in clean-ups, logging what they found, along the coast including at Pakefield, Kessingland, Felixstowe, Dunwich, Bawdsey and Trimley Foreshore.

Members of the Felixstowe Society were joined by the Felixstowe Beach Hut and Chalet Owners Association for a two-hour clean of their adopted beach from Undercliff Road East, to the Spa Pavilion.

Keith Horn, from the Felixstowe Society, said the group of 30 volunteers had collected 42kg of rubbish, of which 7.5kg from a specific 100m stretch of shore was used for the Marine Conservation Society’s research, with every scrap of material identified and logged.

He said: “Most of it was plastic – bottles, cups, fragments of cups, and other items – and I would say most of it had been chucked overboard at sea.

“We also found lots of fishing line, cigarette ends, tin cans, wooden ice cream scoops, and other rubbish.

“It doesn’t all come from the sea and some of it is left by people using the beaches.

“We clean and survey the beach four times a year and it is hard to say whether the situation is improving or not because every tide is different and brings different amounts of rubbish ashore. Last time we collected 80kg in two hours.

“It is quite rewarding and at the end of the event everyone felt satisfied, saying it had been good to clean up the beach and also to provide hopefully some excellent information for the MCS.”