person collecting litter alone

Diary of a Beachcomber: The Race for Reading continues

I’m walking along the coast on a sponsored beach-clean, using the alphabet as my theme.

The aim is to raise funds for the charity Schoolreaders who aim to ensure every child in the UK can read fluently by the age of eleven. Shockingly, 25% fall behind. It jeopardizes their future.

Could you take part in the Race for Reading too?

Day 7 – H is Hard work – I head out along hedgerows just above the high tide’s reach to harvest horrific litter that could wash into the sea. I cover 2.1km and only collect 35 pieces but haul three discarded containers of chemicals that were chucked into the river.

One of three chemical containers chucked into the nature reserve

Day 8 – I is for I have to do something. Imagine our coastlines covered in rubbish. It’s impossible to ignore wanton trash. I’ve found three intact fluorescent light bulbs washed up before now.

We go down to the foreshore to see what recent storms have brought in. When I first moved to the Solent eighteen years ago it was multi-coloured with bottle tops. Volunteers have slowly cleared it but the sea coughs up unwanted plastic on every tide. As we collect flotsam, a £20 note floats up to us!

Day 9 – J is for Just pick it up –

We need to keep picking up litter before it is blown into the sea and this nature reserve

I cross a causeway over a tidal river where drivers obviously chuck rubbish while waiting for the level-crossing to open on the far side. Having a litter-picker makes the job easier and safer. I collect a bagful and continue into town, putting litter straight into council bins. Despite plenty of these, I find a significant amount of cellophane on the quay about to be blown into the harbour. I cover 3.5km collecting litter over 90 minutes.

The Co-op carrier bag is compostable, the plastic pollution is not

Day 10 – K is for keep fit – and keep going. We arrive in Pembrokeshire for a family holiday. I’m tired after the journey but walk about two miles in 90 minutes, collecting a carrier bag full of coastal litter.

Day 11 – L is for Litter – loitering in the tide wrack of Wales, but I’m joined by friends from The Dog House which is fun. We walk 5 kms along a sandy beach where the smallest dog is rather good at finding litter.

Day 12 – M is for mission to rid the cost of plastic pollution. I walk up an estuary for only 2kms but collect a bucketful of PVC rope and plastic wrappers. I repeat the same distance at low tide when the landscape looks quite different.

Would you like to join the challenge? It’s not too late.

The charity SchoolReaders are still looking for runners, swimmers, riders and walkers keen to take part in their Race for Reading.

Run, walk, cycle, swim, ride, wheel, litter-pick

Every pound raised in sponsorship makes a difference and provides more children with vital reading help. They send out T shirts to those who reach £100 in donations along with a R4R 2022 medal to everyone who has raised over £15 and a gold medal to those who have raised over £1,000.

My company will match any sponsorship I personally raise, so any money given via my Justgiving page will be doubled.

Thanks to my very kind supporters I’ve raised £355 so far, which will be doubled to make £710! This will be enough to ensure twenty volunteers are able to listen to children read and give them a love of books, improving their life chances.

Sophie Neville cleaning the mudflats of PVC rope and old fishing line.

And, I’ve stopped litter from threatening wildlife and polluting our seas. For a full list of things I’ve found washed up on the Solent over the years, please click here

Thanks go to Schoolreaders who change the life stories of so many children.

Diary of a litter-picker:

I returned to the shingle beach at Tanner’s Lane on the Solent with my friend, also called Sophie, who took care of the dog while I collected plastic pollution. Having cleaned the same beach seven days ago, all I found was a black plastic lid washed up with a number of micro plastics. I plan to return in another week and begin counting the pieces as an indication of what is being washed up on a 500 metre stretch of the Solent. I guess the amount will depend on whether we have another storm or winter picnic-ers.

Rubbish bucket with Solent plastics wased up in a week

We then walked half a mile up the only lane to the beach. I filled my feed bucket with about 5Kgs of crisp packets, cups, flowerpots, a tin and two glass bottles. My friend was interested in how much more rubbish we spotted on our way back to the car. Litter picking is like that. You see into ditches from a different perspective. Cyclists visiting the New Forest were interested to see how much had been thrown onto the verges of the National Park and were horrified to see how much we collected.

Rubbish collected on the lane to the beach

9th January

We drove through the New Forest the next day, taking note of the verge-side litter. Where does it come from? What kind of motorist can ignore the fact they are driving through a National Park? Cyclists must notice every piece.

I later extracted three items from the Lymington River. Two were cups with plastic lids and plastic straws from McDonalds. The nearest is a 25 minute drive away, yet I often find their packaging. Is it dropped by commuters, visitors or delivery people?

Rubbish MacDonalds

11th January

I found an old carrier bag, put on gloves and collected a bag full of litter on my way into town, finding old things like a neck brace left in the street. The bag is deposited in a municipal bin, as advised. What distressed me was looking over the flood barrier to see so much rubbish dumped in the Nature Reserve.

Rubbish Nature Reserve fly tipping

I walked the dog around Bradbury Rings Iron Age Fort in the afternoon, collecting about 20 items of litter. Although ancient rubbish is the life-blood of archaeologists, I think we can spare them Coke tins.

12th January

I spent 40 minutes collecting litter, walking through the park and along the Solent Way, passing the Yacht Haven. There seemed to be more litter on the ground than a council operative was collecting from the plentiful municipal bins. I found a brand new bag-for-life before picking up two canisters of laughing gas by the Yacht Club. What can I do but re-cycle them?

Rubbish laughing gas 17 Jan 2020

15th January

Storm Brendan hit us hard for two days but the skies finally cleared and enabled me to get down to the coast to collect plastic bottles and wrappers along with two fishing buoys that had blown in from the Solent. It was a joy to be out in the New Forest National Park and felt good to be doing something worthwhile but can I make a difference?

For a list of things I take on a Solent beach clean, please click here

New Forest sunset

Diary of a litter picker: finding lost items

Almost every day I go litter picking it proves to be an adventure. Truly. I find lost things, usually gloves or vehicle parts but treasures too. I return what I can to the rightful owners using the local community Facebook page – within reason.

I have found:

A selection of balls – lots of tennis balls

A shuttlecock

A horseshoe

One half-chap

Unused cable ties

A marine pump accepted by grateful boat owner

The guard for a yacht’s compass:

~I had to ask what this item was. It is unbroken~

Amusing children’s toy that flashes and bounces

2 x bags that once held camping equipment

A picnic chair folded into a sleeve

A brand new ‘disposable barbecue’

Pair of secuteers, rather blunt – so possibly chucked

Brand new tube of Ibuprofen gel

Euros 15

Toy sand moving vehicles

A selection of yachting caps – most have to be thrown away but some can been redeemed. One was labelled and returned to its owner.

When is a half-used can of Jungle Formula insect repellent lost and when is it litter?

I once came across a red plastic chopping board washed up on the coast. Lost or discarded?

I’m sure you will have seen abandoned pub glasses, left behind when the taxi arrives. I could equip my kitchen if I didn’t return them to nearby pubs. How many are taken outside and left for others to gather?

~Stolen, abandoned or both? This was returned to the nearest pub~

And then there is the manna:

2 x unopened bars of chocolate

Huge quantity of potatoes that fell off a lorry that drove past while I was wondering what to cook for supper

2 new unopened cans of larger

Total of 5 x unopened and brand new bottles of larger

A large bottle of Dutch beer. Litter might prove my salvation.

Rubbish mouse nest in bottle

~A mouse’s nest made in an old milk bottle. I left it alone~

But what of the risks?

How many people are injured or killed by litter?

I spent twelve years living in southern Africa. We noticed that mosquitoes breed in stagnant water found in old car tyres and drink cans. If we removed the litter from an area the mosquito population dropped overnight, often to zero. Malaria is one of the biggest killers in the world. It was once prevalent in the UK. We need to stop litter and control rubbish worldwide to reduce the spread of this disease alone. To read a litter about recycling accomplished by Environment Club members in a corner of rural South Africa, please click here.

~Broken bottle found where New Forest ponies graze~

To read about my travels in Africa, please find a copy of ‘Ride the Wings of Morning’

Diary of a lone litter-picker: concluding the Great British Spring Clean

I normally spend at least an hour each evening collecting rubbish from on the Solent shore with my dog. It’s extraordinary what you can find. I have a list here. (see also : Twitter #Solentbeachclean)

This year, I signed up as a volunteer for the Great British Spring Clean with Keep Britain Tidy. On 22 March, I began collecting litter chucked onto the banks of the Lymington River in the New Forest National Park before it could reach the sea. My personal challenge was to keep going, every day until the 23rd April when the Great British Spring clean officially ended.

The initiative inspired me remove rubbish from the ditches in earnest. Ours is a very beautiful area. I like working alone as I can go out when the weather is appropriate and fit in litter-picking with my work and Solent tides.

~A stolen handbag found in a nature reserve~

The results of my efforts:

Litter collected in one month: Total: 1360 minutes ~ about 22 hours

97 x glass bottles, milk bottles and occasionally jars – all recycled by my husband. About 5 of the bottles were half-full with vodka.

300 x plastic bottles including plastic milk bottles chucked into the river where there is a sign saying ‘Otters Crossing’.

I small bag of plastic bottle tops – saved for MENCAP

300 x empty drink tins – mostly alcoholic drinks found road verges. People must be drink-driving

9 x large rubbish bags of mixed litter, weighing about 60kgs: sweet wrappers, crisp packets, sandwich wrappers, disposable coffee cups with lids, drink can wrappers – often neatly knotted, cigarette packs, stubs, old lighters, plastic tobacco bags as well as socks, gloves and other items dropped by mistake.

This doesn’t sound a lot however, when I counted the items, it could take 1,000 pieces of plastic to fill a typical black bag. It could take only a few. Conservation International say, ‘Every day approximately 8 million pieces of plastic pollution find their way to into our oceans. Well, I’ve reduced that a by tiny bit.

Stolen items found:

Jewellery box with sentimental treasures including a wrist watch, a silver filigree broach and a bracelet engraved with the name Shirley

Leather holdall containing a pair of embroidered slippers.

HP laptop with a silver coloured case

Empty leather jewellery box for earrings

Apple iPhone

Acer laptop

Discarded make-up bag (possibly from a stolen hand-bag)

Handbag containing spectacles, make-up and hair brush but no valuables – was able to inform the owner who is coming to collect it.

Vehicle parts found

Part of the bumper of my husband’s car. ‘I thought it would turn up sometime.’

4 x wheel hubs (one claimed after I put it on display)

Wing mirror

Tow-bar cover (given away as a present)

Car radiator

Car bumper – a huge white one

Space-saver spare wheel for a car

Motor tyres x 5

Back shelf of estate car

Metal rod and rubber seals

Reverse light cover – undamaged

5 – litre diesel container with fuel inside

2 x mudguards from bikes

Rubber roller from a RIB trailer – (returned to grateful owner)

Grey grill off a Mercedes – undamaged (anyone want to claim it?)

Council signs found buried in ditches and the estuary

Men at Work sign

Narrowing road sign

Part of a chevron sign someone drove through

3 x temporary road sign stands

Tall black and white stripey bollard

Police bollard

3 x plastic bollards and a sandbag

I wasn’t quite quite sure how to cope but a volunteer from the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust collected the heavy tyres. I’ve piled up road signs I found for the council to collect but he rusty a metal wheelbarrow still needs removing from the ditch that carries floodwater.

Time spent:

Week one: 325 minutes

Week two: 60 minutes

Week three: 430 minutes

Week four: 395 minutes

Week five: 150 minutes

The results have been uploaded at Keep Britain Tidy What I need to do in future is to record how far I have walked and map the stretches I’ve cleaned. I still have to tackle this dirty beach. Three loads have been removed but more awaits. Anyone want to take it on? Otherwise, you can help by pledging your support for the Great British Spring Clean here

As for me, I will continue to walk my dog with a bucket in one hand. It would be too awful to lack a container when I came across rubbish. I’ll keep a list of the things I find for this time next year. However, the project for May is to clean out our garden shed and the clutter in my own office.

Diary of a lone litter picker: week 5 of the Great British Spring Clean focused on the Lymington River Estaury

Rubbish sluice gates

~Litter chucked into the Lymington River~

Day 29

‘Are you winning?’ my friend Alastair asked on the phone. I think so. The challenge to clean up Britain seems endless but once litter is collected it is less likely to re-accumulate. I’m certainly seeing a reduction of waste washed up on Solent shores.

This evening, I make my way into the muddiest location of all: the tidal estuary. Will I ever be able to clean it? Although tidal, it was been used as a sewer for years.

I walk past dinghies moored below the pavement only to come across a sodden bedspread, green with algae and seaweed. It stinks. I scoop it into my bucket, adding other rubbish – plastic bags, wrappers and stacked Costa coffee cups – before spending twenty minutes collecting broken glass. 30 minutes work. No wonder nobody walks here at low tide. It’s lethal.

Day 30

The dog is so longing for a walk, I take the Solent Way up to our local monument. A stream runs from this point down into the estuary. Could it be carrying rubbish with it.

I reach the monument to find it has been renovated beautifully. The stream is running clear but why would anyone leave a can of anti-antiperspirant here? Is it being inhaled? I once found a brand new micro-wave oven, in its box, hidden under the bushes below the obelisk. It was clearly stolen. Then the dog found a large catfish. It must have been dropped by an osprey – not that I have seen one nesting here. I spend 30 minutes gathering predictable pieces of litter and walk home along the river.

~ The Burrard Neale Monument ~

Day 31

I need to tackle the estuary again. After sliding down the embankment, I cautiously make my way onto the mud at low tide. Broken bottles sit in black ouse. I find a police cone encrusted with barnacles, bladderwrack and even a couple of muscles. It has become a mini-ecosystem.

I extract a number of plastic bottles, tins, a fishing float and one triangular Men at Work notice. At least two rusty road-sign stands lurk in the gunge. I go after another traffic cone but find myself being sucked into the mud and retreat clutching a wheel hub and my bucket. The heavier items are left on display for passing motorists to admire.

A multi-million pound Redrow development has risen up recently on the western shore beyond the sluice gates, offering sought after views. Did they not think about removing the rubbish that has accumulated over the decades? No wonder the flats were slow to sell. You’d think the value of the real estate would warrant a little bit of a tidy-up. It takes me 30 minutes.

Day 32

‘I’ll ring if I get stuck in the mud. Please come and extract me!’ I tell my husband.

‘Don’t joke about serious issues,’ he calls back, sure that I will come to grief. ‘Are you taking the dog?’

‘I can’t. There’s too much broken glass.’

Some of the pieces of china I find are clearly Victorian, although none are of value. The shards of glass prove ancient and yet are razor sharp. There is no wave action here, only waders and seabirds searching for food, significant species such as little egrets. How many have been cut by this rubbish over the years?

I slide over seaweed and make my way around the shoreline, filling my purple bucket with litter caught under bushes or embedded in the mud. I end up finding a pristine and very modern bottle of wine. Two men mooring their boat stare as I drag a weathered traffic cone from the black mud and stagger home. If this foreshore was made up of golden sand, it would be a well known beach attracting hordes. How long will it take to recover from being a historic sewer?

I post this photo on Facebook, sharing thoughts with the local community. The men who were disembarking from their dinghy see this shot and apologise for not coming to my aid, which I appreciate. They kindly offer to help haul out anything I can’t manage, using their boat to reach the otherwise inaccessible items. Hopefully we can retrieve the bollard that defeated me earlier in the week. 40 minutes

~How long has this police cone been in the river?~

Day 33

I put out rubbish for the refuse collectors – four large bags of mixed litter that can’t possibly be re-cycled. I’ll spare you the photos. My husband takes the bottles and broken glass with him to the supper-market where he has a long relationship with the re-cycling containers. He insists that I try to rescue the bedspread found in the estuary. I drag it out of the washing machine after two cycles but it still stinks. Noisome is the word. There is no chance it can possibly be of use. I make plans for the pile of vehicle parts I’ve found on verges to be taken to the town dump where useful items are sold cheaply. The only piece of litter added today is a steel cable but all this sorting absorbs 20 minutes of my time.

I log my findings with Keep Britain Tidy, since it is the last day of the Great British Spring Clean. There are no categories for the number of glass bottles, stolen items, road signs or vehicle parts found. I’ll publish the results in my next post.

Total for week: 150 minutes (2.5 hours)

Diary of a lone litter-picker: week 4 of the Great British Spring Clean 2019

~Things I’ve found on Solent shores, including the buckets~

Day 21 –

Our garden has become a retirement home for old buoys. As the school holidays began small children arrived, intent on pestering them. While dear old Mr Puce tolerates being punched, kicked and swung on, Miss Black, a fender who I found washed up on the shore, has a new role as a swing seat. I’m growing quite fond of her.

‘Oh buoy, Oh buoy – Give us a wave!’

Mr White, an elderly buoy who had obviously been working on the Solent, was offered a new role on the Beaulieu River but has opted for a swinging job on a climbing frame in South London. Mr Pink, who had a career in the chemical industry before taking up life on the ocean wave, has passed on, along with an old buoy who sadly got cut up and split his sides open.

‘Where do you find them?’

‘In the New Forest National Park.’

The children are revolted.

The truth was that my dog and I returned home with a number of plastic drums and 5 litre containers I’d previously pulled out of a remote wetland area.

Time spent collecting this rubbish: 40 minutes.

Day 22 –

I sort the litter I’ve collected since the beginning of the Great British Spring Clean: 20 green glass bottles, 20 brown glass bottles and 20 clear glass bottles plus about 10 assorted glass receptacles. Most were so dirty I’ve had to soak them. My husband takes them to be recycled. This is important to him as he used to manufacture cut glass crystal and knows you can’t make glass without glass. A four year-old boy helps me count 137 squashed tins that once contained alcohol. They fill one recycling bag. I can’t bear the thought of counting the plastic bottles. This takes 20 minutes.

~137 tins which once held alcohol, found along one country lane~

I need to sneak off without the dog knowing. It’s too dangerous for him to come when I collect litter beside the main road. I work away for about 15 minutes deciding a lot of people must be drink-driving. Only drivers chuck litter into the verges here. They must have serious disassociation issues to chuck it out while negotiating the sharp bends.

One driver obviously wasn’t concentrating when coming down the hill. The car didn’t turn around the bend at all. It carried straight on, splitting a large black and white chevron sign in two and landing upside-down in the river. The lights were still on when I passed by on my usual litter-picking walk. Miraculously, no one was seriously injured. The vehicle had been wrapped in police cordon tape by the time I returned but lay leaking oil into the river for six weeks. I extracted one half of the chevron sign at the start of the Great British Spring Clean. It’s going begging if anyone would like it to decorate their bedroom. The council couldn’t possibly use it.

Day 23 –

What I thought might be hay-fever turns out to be full-blown cold. I have no energy to expend sorting the carefully gathered rubbish piled up outside my back door. My husband returns from re-cycling the bottles saying that they don’t separate the coloured glass anymore.

~This section of the Solent foreshore was multi-coloured with mirco-plastics 15 years ago~

We have a Portuguese friend staying who also has a bad cold and wants to collect seawater to clear his sinuses. I take him down to the Solent. Here I collect micro-plastics including drinking straws, a balloon and 5kgs of rubbish from a wetland area. The whole exercise takes 90 minutes as the location is quite remote.

Day 24 –

My cold is pulling me down but I find a wheel-hub and spend 20 minutes gathering litter from the roadside going up a hill, amazed at how much old rubbish I didn’t spot the first time. New items infuriate me. Today a Costa coffee mug sits on a ledge overlooking the river like a hidden Easter egg. A banana skin has been carefully folded inside and the cap clipped back on. What does the person who purchased this assume will happen next? It’s madness. Costa give customers a 25p discount if they provide their own mug.

I’m told that nothing can be labelled ‘disposable’ anymore. Things don’t disappear, we simply move them to another place. I maintain that vegetables decompose and chuck the banana skin into the undergrowth but collect the cup with its plastic cap. I know Costa want to recycle this but I can’t walk into all the way into town especially.

Day 25 –

I’m ill in bed nursing my cold but get up in the evening determined to collect another bucketful of rubbish from the main road. I find a discarded ‘Bag for Life’ on the verge and return with quite a number of tins and empty bottles of alcohol.

Are glass bottles being flung out of moving vehicles? I spend a total of 40 minutes collecting and sorting as refuse is collected first thing tomorrow.

Day 26 –

I close my laptop at 6.00pm and spend 40 minutes in search of litter on footpath up to the pub and the main road on the way down. A number of cans have been shredded by a hedge trimmer that breaks glass bottles and makes everything more difficult. I fill a large bucket with cans and a black plastic bag with other rubbish before coming across a discarded road sign. The wheel hub I propped up for motorists to find is still in situ. I wonder how many have been collected by #litterheroes this month?

What do drivers think of me as I grub around at the side of the road? What would they think if I chucked the rubbish back into the road? I get upset when I find newly strewn litter but what can I do? Arrange a line of cans across the lane? String up plastic bottles like Christmas decorations? Would it stop anyone littering?

Day 27 –

I spend the evening walking along the Solent shore, alone with the dog, the sea birds and micro plastics. I photograph my catch before loading the hard stuff. It is clear that some pieces, including a balloon, must have already passed through the digestive tract of an animal, possibly a forest pony.

My aim is to collect bottles and ancient plastic containers lodged in the mud on a footpath running through a wood where I once found Mr-Pink-the-chemical-container in a down-and-out state. I recognise one turquoise bottle from the 1960s. The expedition takes 90 minutes.

Day 28 –

The lady whose stolen handbag I found contacts me to say she can pick it up on 24th April – the last day of the Great British Spring Clean. I still have so much to do.

I take my buckets down to the Solent beach I need to clean. Parking rules have suddenly changed. I’m required to pay £2.50 an hour. Thousands of pounds have obviously been spent on the terminal for the Isle of Wight ferry but this beach next to it, which could be a great asset, has been ignored.

I squeeze my car into a friend’s driveway and take my buckets down to the shore. It is like a rubbish dump. Every time I pull up a section of plastic, sand flies rise. I stuff as much as I can into a bag and gather bottles, plastic straws, fishing net, a yachting cap and other flotsam, and depart with as much as I can carry. The last thing I find is a fairy liquid bottle that must be 30 years old. It’s suddenly all too much. 40 minutes and I have hardly made any impression on the filth. I need to return with friends. As I write this, a neighbour messages me to say she’ll join me. If we work together it’ll be more amusing.

~Which is the oldest plastic bottle?~

What impact has this project had on my life? I have become more dedicated to recycling. Every milk bottle top gets saved for MENCAP. Every tin is crushed and recycled. The amount of domestic rubbish we produce has decreased – as has my waistline. All the walking and bending is keeping me fit. At this rate I might just gain the figure of a Fairy Liquid bottle.