SAS Autumn Beach Cleans: Leave It Better Than You Found It

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There’s no entrance fee for the sea; it’s a free natural resource that so many people get immeasurable pleasure from. At worst you might have to pay to park at the beach, but it’s a small price to pay when you consider what you’re getting. Therefore, when the two annual Surfers Against Sewage Beach Clean Series roll around (or any other beach clean events for that matter – it makes no difference who organises them), we see it as our chance to give a little something to nature’s honesty box and pay it back for the countless hours of fun waves.

This year, SAS’s Autumn Beach Clean Series will see volunteers giving their time to remove litter from over 200 beaches around the British Isles. They’re anticipating that an estimated 4,500 people will turn out, with the total amount of litter removed expected to exceed 15 tonnes! This may be just a fraction of the 269,000 tonnes of macro and micro-plastics that scientists believe are floating in our oceans, but with recent studies showing there to be over 3000 pieces of litter for every km of the UK’s coastline we have to start somewhere and a little improvement is better than leaving the problem to get worse.

According to SAS, 80% of marine litter originates from land based sources, and so the Beach Clean Series is just one part of their efforts to halve the amount of litter floating in our oceans by 2020.

By changing behaviours, challenging manufacturing and underpinning change with strong legislation we can stop litter at source, trapping plastics within a circular economy not the environment.

Beach cleans will be taking place around the country over the week of the 24th until the 30th of October, with an event planned for most key coastal communities. You can find the date and time of your nearest beach clean here, and perhaps plan a surf around it so that you can give a little back, and leave the beach better than you found it.