Beachwatch 2007

Cleethorpes is regarded as one of the cleanest beaches in the country, yet in a two hour period a group of Tollbar students and staff found no fewer that 138 pieces of glass, 90 cigarette stubs, 96 pieces of paper, a pair of socks and pants – and a dead jellyfish. The group was taking part in Beachwatch, an annual national litter survey and clean-up organised by the Marine Conservation Society.

Five Tollbar staff, twelve students from Years 12 and 13, one from Year 11, and four others – family and friends of the students – were supplied with litter pickers, plastic gloves and black bags for the survey of 300m of Cleethorpes beach. The results were sent to the Society for its national database and are used to help to tackle the sources of beach litter.

Director of Sixth Form, Mr. Clark explained that the activity ties in with the introduction of the International Baccalaureate at Tollbar. “For the Baccalaureate, students are required to do 150 hours of various activities that include services that benefit others but it was also organised in response to demands from students to get more involved in the community and environmental projects. We worked closely with Cleethorpes Resort Manager Robert Chalmers who was very helpful and we hope it will lead to more projects in the future. 

Mr Chalmers said: "The Marine Conservation Society is well respected for their work and we were very pleased to hear about this project.

"We have won two new awards this year for our beaches, but there is always a certain amount of litter with any busy resort beach.

"We have increased the number of bins along the seafront this year and in more problematic areas we even have patrols on foot on top of using the rake machine."

Last year’s Beachwatch recorded an average of 1,989 items of rubbish per kilometre on UK beaches which equates to two items for every metre stretch of beach.

It is estimated that, globally, more than a million birds and 1000,000 marine animals and turtles die every year from entanglement or ingestion of plastics.