Great Dorset Beach Clean-up
This years Great Dorset Beach Clean was another great event on a fabulous
day. The Poole Unit contributed 10/15 people towards the total of 674 volunteers. 107 were children and 25 beaches along Dorset's coast were targeted. A total of 615 full bags of rubbish were collected
plus a number of larger items which remained unbaggable (old supermarket trolleys etc.) This included over 71 bags of plastic bottles.
The beach we helped to clean up was part of Holes Bay, around the top corner near the Fire Station, and it was good to see so many of you there. It was a fine sunny afternoon and apart from the obvious large items you can pick up easily it is surprising how many tiny bits of paper, plastic and glass conceal themselves amongst the rocks. It was also good to find how efficient the long arm litter pickers are, even really small pieces can be extracted and dropped in the plastic bags.
We were in a variety of dress, from boiler suits to Uniform and strong footwear was needed to negotiate the mud and climb on the rocks. Des seemed to specialise in pulling items from the very thick mud in a very determined manner, metal frames, long lost wallets and other nasties!
Jenny Penney, a Purbeck Coastal Ranger and the Coordinator of the Great Dorset Beach Clean sent us a very nice e-mail thanking us for our help and perhaps we can take on a beach of our own next year!
Jenny wrote:- “I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Maritime Volunteer
Service teams of Poole and Bournemouth & Christchurch (and from the team
in West Dorset, if they got out (we never heard)) for the tremendous help
you gave towards the success of the Great Dorset Beach Clean this year. As you know it is
an annual event. If you would like to discuss any new ideas for your team
for next years event in April please contact me again.”
Peter Lockwood
(Pictures by Richard Rees)