We are an island nation. Our coastline is precious. It speaks to us of freedom, holidays and relaxation. Those who live near beaches are well aware that they attract visitors who boost the local economy, and yet our shoreline is often covered in rubbish.
I find hundreds of small pieces of fishing net, plastic wrappers and cellophane, washed up on the Solent, along with glass bottles and rope. It’s been going on for years, threatening the environment and wildlife, if not our sanity.
This is historic litter found lodged in bushes along the Solent shore. Much of this is more than ten years old.
After a while it melds with the landscape, remaining a risk to animals. Below, you can see what is typically brought in on the tide.
There is often the remains of one shoe. Have we come to accept the phenomenon of an errant flip-flop? We have begun to accept society’s cast-offs, but why so many plastic pegs?
Metal fish, their hooks elsewhere.
There are usually a lot of bottle and often a lot of blue. Perhaps it’s the recent prevalence of masks.
Plastic pollution collected from Solent shores Jan 2022
This mask was worn over the eyes, rather than mouth, but she’s wearing protective gloves.
This is a battle we all need to fight. The bottom line is that we can’t even use beaches if there is too much broken glass.
Be a litter hero and turn the tide on plastic pollution. Day by day, we’ll get there.
My helpers on a Solent litter-pick
To see a collection of the weirdest this found on a Solent beach clean, please click here.
The charity Keep Britain Tidy is asking everyone to join their million mile litter picking mission #GBSpringclean – Please click here for details
‘I didn’t see any rubbish on the beach,’ I was told by a walker as I extracted plastic bottles and tins from the ditch leading down to the sea. I was glad. I’d cleaned it just before New Year. But, once by the sea, I found a Christmas tree and collected half a bucketful of small pieces of PVC rope and elderly plastic that had been washed up on the shore.
Since this is an isolated beach, it shows how much plastic is floating around the Solent. Someone might like their plumb line returned.
While a few things are clearly dropped by mistake,
the amount of litter and ageing plastic on public beaches remains unacceptable. I cannot walk by without collecting it. It takes a good hour to fill each of these buckets, which contain bags of dog poo and dangerous broken glass. They can end up weighing 4Kgs each.
What are helium balloons doing to the environment? I find one a day.
‘There’s no rubbish on the beach,’ I’m assured by walkers, the next week. I agree that it looks okay. It should be fine. I’ve cleared it a hundred times.
But, almost immediately, I find bottle ring and other items dangerous to wildlife. Then I come across fishing line, the fish hooks bound up in weed.
By the time I reach the end of the beach, I have filled my bucket, finding evidence of nitrous oxide canisters chucked into fires. The ghost rope alone could have caused havoc to shipping.
About this much plastic and glass washes up on a half-mile stretch of the Solent every twenty-four hours. It is not always easy to see it, but it’s there.
‘There is no litter,’ I’m told on approaching the foreshore with my dog-walking neighbour. We keep looking anyway. My friend spots this:
Before long, I had a filled my bucket. Again. Perhaps it’s only when you begin litter picking yourself that you appreciate how bad the problem is. Do join us!
And yet, we didn’t retrieve everything. Can you see what I see?
I found this heavy duty bucket, a pink feed bucket and an orange one, washed up on the Solent shore where I’ve been collecting #plasticpollution over the years. They are not that big but, since it is important to collect small pieces of plastic, each one often holds 250 pieces of marine rubbish by the time I head home. Two of these prove all I can carry when full, especially if I come across glass.
My aim is to collect litter every day rather than exhaust myself by doing too much at one time. I find buckets better than bags that blow about in the wind. I can collect broken glass, setting the bucket down to reach difficult pieces. A larger pannier with flip-up lids, might be good for windy beach-cleans but I use these feed buckets gifted to me by the sea. They make picking up bags of other people’s dog poo bearable.
I usually put on Wellington boots, an old jacket with pockets for things I might keep and wear a hat suitable for getting under bushes. I take a mobile phone in case I get stuck in the mud or need help. This is used to photograph and record my findings. That’s it. The rubbish has been washed clean by the sea, so I only wear gloves when it’s cold.
Having said this, I am very careful how I pick up harmful waste. Batteries and old flares can leak caustic chemicals.
I find odd things that have grown into the landscape and require tools before they can be extracted. I needed to take a pair of secuteers to cut a polystyrene tray out of a black thorn bush on the coast. The vegetation had grown around it.
At times, I find so much rubbish that my pink bucket is often not large enough but I can’t carry more back from remote areas. I return for glass bottles. They don’t blow away.
Traffic makes it dangerous to collect litter from roadside verges, even on country lanes. It can be terrifying. I have decided to avoid certain main roads. Do look up the Keep Britian Tidy website and gen-up on safety issues if you decide to go litter-picking. You need to wear a high-vis jacket of some kind. I take my orange bucket, wear rubberised gloves and barbecue tongs to reach into hedges. I prefer tongs to a litter grabber.
Litter-pickers working in groups along roadsides tell me it is essential to wear High Vis tabbards and have Men at Work signs put out if possible. Apart from offering safety, the jackets give you status, encourage PR chat and interaction with the public. The litter can be filthy. Some take a bottle of hand sanitiser.
~Litter collected from a 100 meters along a lane in the New Forest National Park~
I sometimes take three buckets: one for tins, one for plastic and glass bottles and one for general waste. It cuts time when it comes to sorting the rubbish for recycling afterwards when I’m tired.
I re-use old plastic containers with decent lids to dispose of ‘sharps’ and keep a stock of plastic bags supplied by the council. I have hand-held luggage scales to weigh them. A full black plastic bag can weigh between 5kgs and 10 kgs.
I have just bought a small tally counter. Once you get used to clicking in with the same hand that is holding the bucket and the dog lead, it is a huge encouragement. See if you can guess how many items are in this bucket before looking at the counter, bottom right.
Problem items include road signs, bollards and sand bags that the council don’t regard as their property. They get left by contractors. I find a huge number of car parts that need to be taken to the dump. I would have loved to send all these things to build a stage at Glastonbury or something that would be of use.
Some councils are very well organised. Please click here for an example. They request that you ask permission before collecting rubbish. Whilst I have checked with my local nature reserve, my own council didn’t respond. Not with-standing this, I walk the pavements and pick up what is not meant to be there. I can’t think who would object.
It is good to survey an extreme area before you begin. There is one filthy bay on the Solent I still need to tackle. It requires a planned attack, removing the broken glass first.
Do record, what you find, keeping lists and a map of where you have been. We now have an informal network of people in our community who look after different roads in the area. Do register with Keep Britain Tidy, who will send you details of Health and Safety, posters and more info.
~ A remote section of the Solent shoreline: photo Michael Wells ~
When I first visited this shoreline seventeen years ago it was multi-coloured. Tiny pieces of plastic, bottle tops and PVC ropes littered the coast. There were huge pieces of refuse that were difficult to shift. Most of it had been washed up, rather than left by visitors. I would take a black plastic bag down to fill with rubbish, but often gave up in despair. Slowly, volunteers have cleared it.
I now try to go down every day to keep it clear of #plasticpollution. Although it looks clean at first glance, I usually fill a large bucket for every mile of Solent shoreline. This will normally contain about 250 items. Most are small ‘micro-plastics’. It involves a lot of bending-down. I sometimes return home weighed down by large items such as ten-gallon plastic drums. I then Tweet photos of my finds on #Solentbeachclean
The usual things I find related to fishing:
Fishing net and PVC rope – often small pieces of green PVC cord, sometimes embedded in the mud.
Fishing line – one length extracted from the mouth of a wild pony.
Anglers’ floats, lures and hooks.
PVC rope, fishing nets and floats.
Plastic grating and discs from crab traps.
Polystyrene in different stages of decay. Some pieces are huge.
Disposable rubber gloves and undisposable protective gloves.
Old buoys of all colours. One was too heavy for me to remove.
25 litre chemical containers used as buoys.
Plastic crates. One from Plymouth, one from the Clyde, one from Brittany. One made a good umbrella when a storm blew in as I walked home.
The usual things I find relating to sewage:
Plentiful cotton-bud stalks and other lengths of plastic
Tampon applicators and the back of panty liners
Wet wipes and floss sticks
Condom packs – some unopened. Bits of old condoms
Items dropped or washed off boats:
Fenders
Old paintbrushes and cans of paint
Deck brushes and sponges, plastic buckets and cleaning materials
Cans of WD40, engine oil and lubricants
Plastic pegs – lots
Tea bags
Plastic tags
Plastic funnels and nozzles
Shower-curtain rings
Half-empty bottle of turpentine (disposed of responsibly)
Pieces of gaffer tape and insulation tape – lots
3 x Fluorescent light bulbs
Light bulbs
The usual things I find left by visitors to the shore or washed up:
PPE masks and homemade masks.
Hundreds of spent shotgun cartridges including the insides of paper cartridges.
Old underpants, socks, gloves, caps, t-shirts and other clothing.
Crisp wrappers – the sell-by date of one declared it to be more than 12 years old.
Broken glass – always collected for fear it will cut dogs’ paws or wild ponies.
Glass bottles and jars, recycled by my husband who used to manufacture cut glass crystal.
A sealed jar of Nescafe Gold Blend – which we used.
Hundreds of plastic bottles of all shapes and sizes, along with plastic drums. Many of these are washed up rather than dropped.
Babies dummies and children’s toys
The usual things I find that come in on the tide:
Old cigarette lighters of every colour and hue – about one a day.
Old flip-flops and shoes.
Tiling crosses/dividers
Plastic bags of every description, many buried in the mud.
Bottle tops and bottle rings of every shape and colour, usually plastic.
Plastic straws – about one a day – and cellophane covers to straws.
Plastic cups sometimes colonized by seaweed.
Sweet wrappers, cellophane, wrappers for packets of biscuits or other food.
Plastic hooks and tags of every kind including six-pack plastic.
Toothbrushes, nail files, make-up holders, ear plugs
Syringes and empty packs to tablets
Spray on aftershave and deodorants
Protective masks and PPE masks.
Helium balloons – one or two a day, usually with the string attached.
Flower pots of different sizes.
Little plastic fish, which once contained soy sauce.
Bubble wrap, other packaging and lumps of insulation material.
Brushes of all description, mainly for cleaning boats.
Rigger’s mallet.
Heavy duty plastic bottles that once contained teak oil or engine oil, including 5 gallon containers.
Sponges and scourers of different types.
Micro-plastics: usually small pieces of blue, red, white or black plastic.
Party poppers.
Corks from bottles, some plastic
Plastic bubble making toys
Aerosol cans and drink tins of all kinds.
Dairylea spread cartons and other plastic tubs
Old pens of all descriptions and various plastic sticks.
Old sticking plasters
Plastic cable ties – originally manufactured by my father.
Broken toys including a purple revolver and old balls.
Sophie Neville on a #Solentbeachclean (photo: Octavia Pollock)
People ask if I wear gloves: sometimes. They ask if I take a grabber: usually. They want to know if I am addicted: possibly. I spend about 90 minutes a day or 30 hours a month on my #Solentbeachclean but it keeps me fit, exercises the dog and gets us out while doing something useful. We walk with a purpose. The wind can be brisk but I never get cold.
I go with friends or family. I can fit litter-picking in with my work, taking advantage of good weather. My only worry is getting stuck in the mud. I have to admit that my back gets sore if there is a big haul to lug home but my hunter-gatherer instincts have been awakened. There is treasure to be found.
The unusual things I find:
3 x long fluorescent light bulbs – fully intact. They contain mercury. Both were washed up in the same place, years apart.
Intact domestic light bulb – haven’t had the guts to test it.
Star Wars mask
Rusty welding cylinder – I though it was an unexploded bomb and reported it to the police. Bit embarrassing.
Rusted depth charge – I was told this is a metal buoy but it has been identified as a WWII depth charge.
Old pair of binoculars.
~ Solent mudflats looking towards the Needles: photo Michael Wells ~
Useful things I have found:
2 x feed buckets, one pink, one orange, used to collect rubbish henceforth
Brand new rubber-inflatable ring, which made a good Christmas present for someone I know.
Life-belts and buoys
Lens cap, that was washed 800 yards down the coast – returned to grateful owner
Brand new carpenter’s saws.
Yellow whistles from life jackets.
Yachting caps x 5. One was labelled and returned to its owner.
Neoprene sun-glass holder – bit grotty
New rope and cord.
Elastic boom-holder for a Scow dinghy
A boathook
Pencils
The number 5
A paddle
Paintbrush
Tent pegs
2 x children’s plastic beach spades
Beach toys
New garden hose attachments
Tennis balls
Wheels from two different dinghy launch trailers
A dinghy cushion akin to a garden kneeler
Sailing kit bag – unclaimed.
Can of WD40 still operable.
Unopened, sealed jar of Nescafe Gold, consumed at home.
Large fenders – some in pristine condition. I gather they cost about £60 each to buy new.
Sophie Neville at the House of Commons with Heroes of the GBSC 2019
I officially volunteered 195 minutes of my time to clean the banks of the Lymington River, where litter gets chucked before being washed into the sea. This nature reserve belongs to Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust of which I am a member. I expect it will take me 1,950 minutes – about 33 hours, which is my average for a month.
There can be rewards to Wombling, as my friend calls it. I was once filmed trudging along a beach for a Chanel 4 ident. We were given a fee, in cash. This is my black dog, my nephew and me on a beach in Wales: Sophie and the old buoys.
Sophie Neville 