It can be an uphill battle when you realise the “unquantifiable” amount of microplastics in the ocean, Stevenson acknowledges. Fishermen’s kisses, nurdles and biobeads – special names for fragments of fishing nets and small plastic pellets – are part of the vernacular, recognised by locals as devastating to marine life. And, living in the county with the largest coastline (422 miles), it is no surprise that the Cornish are deeply invested in their surroundings. Most volunteers crouch over tangles of seaweed, fishing plastic from burrows, but a small group leaves to remove a plastic pontoon wedged into a cliff before it breaks up into minuscule pieces of polystyrene.Īround 5,000 items of marine plastic pollution exist for each mile of beach in the UK, according to the Marine Conservation Society. Stormy weather and high spring tides have made rich pickings for them, as buried plastics, hidden for decades at the bottom of the sea bed, have churned up to the surface. On a winter morning around 50 people, armed with litter pickers and recycling sacks, have come out on a Sunday to offer a hand. The new face of pollution: Emily Stevenson found 171 items of PPE in a one-hour litter pick in Cornwall. But in the dead of winter, when country lanes are quiet and the long swathes of sand are no longer cluttered by windbreakers, beach towels and body boards, bands of locals come to the beach on the hunt for rubbish. This stretch of coastline is Rick Stein territory – the whimsical Cornwall of foraging in hedgerows, steaming mussels and stargazy pie – or at least as television would have you believe. The duo formed the social enterprise Beach Guardian, and have since spent thousands of hours scouring various cliffs and coves in more than 200 beach cleans.īeach Guardian focuses its efforts on the seven bays between Newquay and Padstow, two of the county’s most well-trodden holiday destinations. But after a serendipitous moment made headlines – when Emily unearthed an empty packet of crisps from 1997, the same year she was born, it led to her wearing a graduation dress made from crisp packets that was widely reported – numbers of volunteers “exploded”. “We would build sandcastles out of plastic.” Although she and her father, Rob Stevenson, often carried out impromptu beach cleans, it was not until 2017 that they held their first community clean. “Litter was always a part of my childhood in north Cornwall,” says 24-year-old Emily Stevenson. Unlike surfing, dog-walking or cold-water swimming, beach cleans require little equipment or hardiness – just a common goal to keep treasured outdoor spaces litter-free. We would build sandcastles out of plastic Emily StevensonĪcross Cornwall, community beach cleans have gathered momentum as a year-round activity appealing to all ages. Litter was always a part of my childhood in north Cornwall. “You become a pariah if you litter,” she says. The area’s social values, she believes, are changing, much like when smoking became taboo. Even the local pub runs nightly beach cleans in the summer,” Orme says. From the village elders right down to the youngest kids. “It’s becoming the culture of the whole village. In their home town of Portreath, with a population of around 1,400 permanent residents, environmental custodianship is catching on. “Now, wherever she goes, she automatically picks up litter and hands it to me.” The two are spending their morning, like countless mornings before, litter-picking on their nearest beach. “Harriet is a womble,” her mother, Sophie Orme, says. Not because the huge, critically endangered turtle had crossed the seas from the tropics to a defunct fishing harbour on the north coast of Cornwall, but because it had most probably died after ingesting thousands of tiny pieces of plastic. W hen eight-year-old Harriet Orme saw a dead hawksbill turtle in her Cornwall village’s harbour three years ago, the image haunted her.
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