The Great British Beach Clean
Tuesday 18th September 2018
On Friday 14th September, over 60 Paper Round staff and customers went down to Brighton beach as part of the Marine Conservation Society’s (MCS) Great British Beach Clean.
The Great British Beach Clean is the biggest beach clean and survey in the UK. Volunteers have been collecting information for the last 25 years and have helped to spur on government initiatives such as the plastic bag charge and the microplastics ban.
With the weather on our side, our ‘army’ of staff and customers headed down to Brighton beach in matching t-shirts. We divvied out gloves, pickers and bags, and had a health and safety demonstration from the Brighton Seafront office. We then spent nearly two hours combing the beach for waste, collecting ten bags of rubbish weighing over 8kg. We picked up small pieces of plastic waste such as bottle caps, broken glass, corks and over 300 cigarette butts! Where possible we collected materials for recycling, and sent all of the cigarette butts to TerraCycle who recycle them into useful plastic products.
‘There is a major problem with ocean litter, much of which ends up on beaches. It’s surprising how much discarded rubbish goes unnoticed until you run an event like this… Events like this raise awareness and we’re grateful to our clients for joining us for a great cause.' Dominic Collison, Sales Director at Paper Round
The beach clean was followed by a tasty picnic on the beach to reward our volunteers for their hard work, supplied by our one of our Brighton customers, Jaspers Catering.
‘I thoroughly enjoyed doing some good in the sunshine, on a beach! Lunch was awesome too.' Jo Wilby, Disney
Overall the day was a great success and thoroughly enjoyed by all our volunteers. Our data will be vital for the MCS in turning the tide on litter.
Head to our Facebook page to view all the pictures from the day.
Jessica Parrilla
