As we entered March, with the ‘Beast From The East’ and Storm Emma colliding over Britain to produce some of the coldest weather seen in years, you might think no one would dare even going outside, let alone to a beach.
However, our beach clean heroes didn’t just prove that assumption wrong - they blew it out of the water! (and straight into one of our collection bins to be recycled)
Last Saturday 3rd March, over 200 heroic volunteers braved the cold and turned up to Brighton beach for Pier 2 Pier’s biggest ever beach clean event. They donned their best superhero costumes, grabbed a pair of silent disco headphones and picked up over 250 kg of litter!
Pier 2 Pier were blown away by the turnout and enthusiasm of all our volunteers, and the amazing effort everyone put into making recycled and upcycled superhero fancy dress. We were especially impressed by how many mini-beach clean heroes turned up to fight the litter, and just look at their epic costumes!
Image Credit: Jimpix
The litter collected included bottles, cups, food wrappers, bits of old fishing rope and much, much more. All rubbish was handed in at our Trash Converter outside The Tempest Inn, where it was sorted and sent off to be recycled. Millions of tonnes of plastic enter the ocean from the land every day and kill tens of thousands of marine mammals, fish and seabirds. Just off the coast of Brighton, 35% of fish are predicted to have plastic in their guts. Pier 2 Pier’s beach cleans aim to cut down on this damaging pollution, improving the quality of our beaches and oceans and giving marine life a fighting chance.
Speaking to The Argus, our organiser Amy Gibson said:
“People can make a difference by joining the beach clean and taking it upon themselves to pick up litter when they are out and about, it is everyone’s responsibility not just the councils.
“We can also reduce our plastic consumptions with straws, carrier bags, bottles and coffee cups. There areuseable alternatives and we should be using those and ditching single-use plastic.”
Image credit: Jimpix
This event was our contribution to the Great British Spring Clean - a national campaign organised by Keep Britain Tidy taking place throughout March, which aims to inspire over 400,000 people across the UK to get outdoors and help clean up litter in towns, countryside, beaches and parks. Due to the weather, many events got cancelled - but not ours! There’s plenty more clean-up events still to come, and now that the weather is improving, you’ve got no excuse! You can find them all on this handy interactive map.
This event was our first ever silent disco beach clean to feature live DJs! Our beach clean heroes were treated to some brilliant tunes provided by our head-to-head DJs Miles Metric and Rodrigo Kerr.
As well as cleaning the beach and grooving down to the silent disco, local music collective Unite The Beat were back again to lead some litter-based music workshops in The Tempest Inn. The Deans Beach and Environment Volunteers came down to teach our beach clean heroes about marine life and the effects that pollution is having on it, and we also had a stall selling our own Pier 2 Pier branded merchandise - including recycled tote bags and reusable straws.
Image credit: Jimpix
We would like to say a huge huge thanks to our partners Recycling & refuse in Brighton & Hove and to the collaborators, supporters and friends of this event - The Deans Beach & Environment Volunteers, The Tempest Inn, Unite The Beat, Amber Rose Morgan Films, jimpix.com, The Joyful Web, Miles Christopher Crook & Rodrigo Bortolin Kerr.
And a very special thanks to all of our wonderful volunteers on the day, we couldn't do it without you! If you'd like to volunteer with us in future then please get in touch. Our next beach clean will be taking place on Sunday 22nd April in aid of International Mother Earth Day. We hope to see you all there!
But for now, please check out this awesome video from Saturday!
Video credit: Amber Rose Morgan