Biggest Spring Beach Clean ever sees over 35,500 volunteers clean 571 UK beaches

Over 35,500 volunteers mobilised last week around the UK to take part in the biggest beach clean in the UK day to date.

The volunteers, including one wedding couple, cleared 571 beaches, rivers, canals, marinas and lakes and removed a staggering 63 tonnes of marine plastic pollution.

Organised by Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) along side the Environment Agency, the clear up was also monitored and results showed that 27% of all beach litter collected was avoidable plastics.

Some 10 tonnes of plastic waste was also sent to London to be filmed for the One Show behind a panel that included SAS chief executive, Hugo Tagholm, Environment Minister, Michael Gove, TV presenter and environmentalist, Chris Packham and a spokesperson from the British Plastics Federation.

The Big Spring Beach Clean in numbers

• 571 – SAS Big Spring Beach Clean events took place across the UK
• 43– SAS Mini Beach Cleans ran during the main week of cleans
• 35,740 – SAS Volunteers joined in with the cleans
• 65,685kg – of marine plastic pollution was removed from our coastline. The equivalent of 16,421.5       full bin bags
• 27% – of the litter collected was ‘avoidable plastics’, around 17 tonnes!
• 153,420– the number of volunteer hours donated across the Big Spring Beach Clean
• £1,353,613 – the financial value of these volunteer hours to coastal communities
• 57– the number of SAS Beach Cleans led by schools, colleges and universities
• 10 tonnes– the amount of plastic delivered to Broadcasting House, London for The One Show to be seen by 7 million people.
• 1 – the number of wedding couples that joined an SAS Beach Clean!

In the last decade, the Big Spring Beach Clean has grown into one of the largest and most impactful marine conservation events and the SAS is also spearheading the growing movement for Plastic Free Coastline.

Surfers Against Sewage has also been selected as one of seven charities to benefit from the donations marking the Royal Wedding of Prince Harry and Ms. Meghan Markle.

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