A massive thank you to everyone who took part in the Great British Beach Clean 2025 – Sandgate. 35 people across all age ranges answered the call to arm themselves with not only your usual litter-picking equipment but also clipboard, pen and data sheets. For this was not just a litter-pick it was a Marine Conservation Society litter pick where each piece of litter is identified and logged. The collected data then contributes to vital evidence for policy change and understanding marine litter.

This year we had such a great response we had to create two new stretches to clean and survey. From 6 x100m stretches of beach we collected 1042 pieces of rubbish. Fitting in with the 2024 national picture 72% of that was plastic. Some rubbish had clearly been in the sea for a while; some had been blown in; some was road or pavement rubbish which had been swept down the storm drains and some had just been left by beach users.  The total weight collected was 11.8kg which was pretty good considering how many plastic wrappers we picked up which barely weigh a gram. A positive noticeable change was that practically all the cutlery we picked up was wooden instead of plastic and the item collected most commented on by the litter-pickers was plastic cable-ties.

Gemma Adams

October 22, 2025