Community Beach Cleaning

People are now much more aware of the importance of looking after our beaches and marine environment. It wasn’t always like that though. One voluntary group at Cleveleys has been at the forefront of community beach cleaning since 2008.

Rossall Beach Residents & Community Group were the first beach care group on the Fylde Coast. They invite you to join their community beach cleans at Cleveleys. They’re held every 4 weeks on the northern stretch of pebbly seafront, between The Venue and Rossall School.

Formed a few years afterwards, Cleveleys Beach Cleaners meets on alternate Sundays and looks after the beach against the stepped sea defences.

The efforts of both groups contributes towards the annual Seaside Awards for well maintained and clean beaches. Why don’t you join in?

Community Beach Cleaning

Everyone is welcome to come along. Wrap up warm/dress for the weather and wear sensible shoes.

Rossall Beach Buddies meet monthly at 9.30am in the car park area near to the tall sign board and flag pole on Rossall Promenade, FY5 1LP. Find the dates in the Visit Fylde Coast events guide. Look at the Rossall Beach Buddies Facebook page or website.

Cleveleys Beach Cleaners meet roughly every two weeks (depending on the tide) near the white Sea Swallow sculpture at the end of the high street. You’ll see people gathering there. Their dates are also in the Visit Fylde Coast events guide. Check out the Cleveleys Beach Cleaners Facebook page too.

There’s no need to register or to be a member of either group. You’ll see people gathering before the start of both events. Beach cleans start with a quick 2 minute safety briefing.

You’ll be provided with equipment including gloves, litter pickers and sacks. Just make sure that you dress according to the weather. Bear in mind that if it’s a bit breezy where you live there’s an odds on chance that it will be blowing a gale on the beach. So in cool weather make sure you wrap up warm, and on sunny days wear sunscreen. Please wear sensible shoes for walking on the pebbles.

If the weather on the day of the clean is too windy or too wet it will be cancelled and a notice posted by 8.30am on the Rossall Beach Buddies Facebook page. Cleveleys Beach Cleaners will also notify you via Facebook if clean-ups are cancelled. Please check before travelling as the weather on the coastline can be quite different to that inland.

Make Friends and Have Fun

The Rossall Beach Group beach clean until about 10.45/11am and then make their way to The Venue for coffee. That’s why it’s known as ‘Beach Clean and a Brew’.

Their organised beach cleans cover the area from The Venue to the Five Bar Gate near Rossall School. This beach doesn’t generally get covered by the sea at high tide. So there’s a continual strandline along the pebbles – it includes sea borne rubbish of all kinds.

Beach cleaning can be quite a solitary activity with people litter picking on their own. The ‘brew’ adds a bit of a social element, because making friends and having fun is at the heart of everything that the Rossall Beach Group do. Take a look at this video and find out what to expect –

Beach Clean on your Own

When you come to the beach please feel free to pick up any litter which you see on your travels and pop it in a bin. The more people who pick up just one piece of litter, the cleaner our beach and sea will be. Don’t forget that litter can easily blow from pavements and highways onto the beach, so picking that up is a big help too.

Rossall Beach Residents & Community Group also runs a Lone Beach Cleaner programme. If you can’t make it along to the monthly organised events, this enables you to go out on your own at a time to suit yourself. You’ll need to be a member of the group, then register as a Lone Beach Cleaner. Collect your litter picking kit and guidelines after you’ve signed up and away you go.

Cleveleys Beach Cleaners just meet for the clean up and then go. They don’t include a drink afterwards in their events.

Rubbish on the Beach

The amount of litter left behind depends on the weather. Rough seas and high winds carry the biggest amount of plastics and non-degradable rubbish which they leave behind to be physically removed. Very little litter is actually dropped here by people using the beach and promenade – largely due to the adequate numbers of litter bins.

It’s important to remove the plastic from the beach. Not only does it look unsightly but it’s also a serious threat to wildlife.

Marine mammals like seals, plus fish and birds eat the plastic believing it to be jellyfish or other digestible food. It can eventually fill their stomachs so that they then starve to death, like the bird in the next photo.

Fishing line, balloon litter and rope can tangle around animals, birds and fish. It stops them from swimming and flying and they drown. Or it just snags and catches then and acts like a noose. And so it goes on….

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A Helping Hand to the Environment

Beach cleaning is a never ending task, like painting the Forth Bridge. At each clean a lot of rubbish is removed, sometimes up to half a tonne in one morning. If it was left, the cumulative effect of it all would be too horrible to think about. Each pile of sacks represents a huge helping hand to the environment.

These events are run in conjunction with Wyre Council Waterfront Rangers and and helped by volunteer Rangers. Anyone can come along and help, no matter where they live. All that matters is that you have an interest in the beach and making it look nice. Plus helping to improve the environment for the wildlife that lives in the water and on the beach.

There’s been a definite reduction in the amount of litter which is picked up at each monthly clean. And that’s all down to the work of the volunteers.

Beach cleaning is a vital part of improving water quality – not only does it improve our seas and beaches, it also provides hands-on awareness of what ends up in our water courses and ultimately the sea. It gives an understanding of how you can play your own part at home in helping to improve bathing water quality on the Fylde Coast.

Why litter picking is important

Rubbish contributes to the quality of the sea water, especially the sewage related debris. We might only collect the plastic remains from sanitary litter. But it’s an indicator of how much actual sewage has been discharged to rivers and the sea.

The rubbish itself is hugely detrimental on the wildlife of the oceans. Animals get caught up by litter and suffocate or drown. Or they eat it, and with a stomach full of plastic, starve to death. Litter, found on every beach, takes literally forever to degrade, if at all so please dispose of your rubbish carefully. For example:

• Aluminium cans – 400 years
• Plastic can holder – 400 years
• Plastic bottle – 400 years
• Crisp packet – 75 years
• Fishing net (trawler) – 600 years
• Plastic bag – 30 years
• Cotton bud stick – 450 years
• Newspaper – 1 year
• Glass bottle – 1 million plus years.

MCS Annual Event at Rossall Beach

Rossall Beach Residents & Community Group have also adopted this shingle beach with the Marine Conservation Society (MCS). The group hosts the national, Annual MCS Beach Clean here every September.

Plastic pollution in our seas and the crisis the oceans face is no longer under the radar. Industry, individuals and governments know that we have to act NOW. Litter picking is just one practical thing that you can do to show your support. A nationwide army of beach cleaners all around the UK, Channel Islands and the Isle of Man collect during this event every year. And volunteers are all over the world as part of the global International Coastal Clean-up. It takes a snapshot of beach litter across the planet on a single weekend.

Data Collection Informs National Change

Did you know that data from the MCS beach cleans has helped to spell the end for a number of single-use plastic products? For example:

• Introduction of the 5p carrier bag charge and a huge reduction in their use. The single-use plastic carrier bag charge across all the home nations has resulted in a 28% drop in the number of bags found on UK beaches.
• The movement to stop plastic straws being handed out in their thousands. Now banned in thousands of bars and restaurants.
• Clearer labelling on wet wipes and cutting out their plastic content
• Ban on use of microbeads in personal care products
• Ban on plastic stems on cotton buds – now all swapped to cardboard
• Proposed deposit return systems
• There’s a growing momentum to see a tax on plastic ‘on the go’ items, like lids, stirrers and cutlery. Many have swapped to environmentally friendly alternatives.
• These have all happened thanks to volunteer beach cleaners.

Quantifying Local Litter

The Rossall Beach Group has gained practical insight into what litter is and where it might have come from – but never had any firm evidence to back these theories up. But the Coast Watchers citizen science project has been measuring marine litter on Rossall Beach and changed that.

Volunteers have analysed this same stretch of beach on a monthly basis between August 2021 and July 2022. Collecting, recording, analysing, and weighing the litter has helped to start to understand how much litter is on the beach, where it is, and what types of litter are found.

The results are interesting and back up the anecdotal evidence. Most of the scraps are indistinguishable plastic which has been in the sea a long time and windy weather washes more of it to shore. Read the full results of this research here.