A toy soldier, a discontinued chocolate bar wrapper, and a mannequin leg; no this isn’t the average contents of a university dorm room after freshers week, but a selection of the weirdest and not-so-wonderful items making up the staggering 6,048kg of litter collected from this year’s Great British Beach Clean.

Taking the fight directly to the beaches, it was some 5,845 volunteers that flocked to the UK and Channel Island coastlines this September, to take part in an annual ritual to rid these once pristine, natural habitats of as much rubbish as possible.

And what a show of force it was. In the nine short days between September 20th and the 29th, volunteer beach cleaners managed to collect over 249,823 pieces of ocean-polluting litter, a haul weighing in at more than 6,000kg – the equivalent to 15 adult male polar bears.

Keeping a track of things, volunteers from the Marine Conservation Society – the organisers behind this annual mass clean-up – recorded and documented each item of the near quarter-of-a-million pieces of rubbish collected, a process that will now help researchers build an informed picture of just what kind of rubbish is polluting our seas.

An annual report used routinely to inform policy-makers in the UK and around the world, the results of this survey will be revealed in the upcoming State of our Beaches document next March, in which the Marine Conservation Society will detail current pollution trends and the items most frequently found during the clean up.

“Thanks to thousands of volunteers, we’ll be able to inform policy makers what kind of litter is washing up on our beaches,” said Clare Trotman, beachwatch officer at the Marine Conservation Society. 

Earlier this year, the charity’s team of researchers revealed the UK had seen an 80% drop in carrier bags washing up on its shores since the introduction of the 5p carrier bag charge in 2015. Before the introduction of this charge, more than 7.6 billion single-use carrier bags were given to customers by major supermarkets across England each year, working out as 140 carrier bags per person.

“And that’s exactly why we do what we do,” said Clare. “We know these kinds of policies work to reduce litter and protect marine life, but we need data to show what’s ending up in our seas.”

Awareness around the quantity of rubbish washing up on British beaches, as well as beaches around the globe, couldn’t be timelier. Having closed proceedings on COP16 without reaching a formal agreement on financing the reversal of biodiversity and habitat loss, world leaders will soon be heading to Busan in the Republic of Korea to enter the fifth and final round of global Plastic Treaty talks. The purpose of this meeting will be to finalise an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment.

According to the Marine Conservation Society’s 2023 State of our Beaches report, nine out of the top ten litter items found on UK beaches are made using plastic. Plastics break down over time into microplastics which threatens not only marine life which can ingest or become entangled in them, but have a knock-on effect on human health as we ingest plastics through marine animal consumption. 

The Marine Conservation Society is, therefore, urging the UK government to move faster on its policies to cut down plastic waste and prevent items from reaching our seas.

Across the UK, volunteers taking part in the Great British Beach Clean recorded their most bizarre beach finds to include an exhaust pipe, half a bed sheet, clay pigeons, a mannequin leg, and many other “unpleasant finds.”

Cullen Allen, founder of Cully and Sully Soup, sponsors of this year’s Great British Beach Clean, said: “The strangest thing I found during this year’s Beach Clean was the dog poo bags. People went to the effort of using a bag then left the bag on the beach. It was definitely not a pleasant find. 

“But, a huge thanks to all the great volunteers that keep collecting data on beach litter items so that the Marine Conservation Society can keep working for cleaner and healthier seas.”

The Marine Conservation Society’s Clare Trotman, added: “Along the way, we do find some interesting pieces of litter. One that keeps puzzling me is how a full-size traffic barricade ended up on a beach in Anglesey. We’ll never know.”

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