My First Beach Clean | Earth Day

Today is Earth Day, and a lot of people are starting to recognise that we need to look after our planet and make changes to reduce their plastic usage.

Yesterday, I went to my first beach clean to start helping my surrounding environment. Over the past few months I've been becoming more aware of my own plastic waste. Thanks to following amazing people like my friend Sophie, I've learned so much about better alternatives for the environment.

Surfers Against Sewage organised this beach clean, but there is also another the first Saturday of every month in Portsmouth (I recommend doing a Facebook search for clean ups near you!). We arrived at 10.30am to sign in and pick up gloves and pickers ~ these get snapped up really quickly so I advise getting there early or bring your own if you can. We then listened to a safety talk about what to do if you find sharps or items like flares, which is to notify the team and do not attempt to pick them up yourself.

Myself and Sophie then tried to scour the beach for any plastic pollution. As the weather had been very summery this week I was expecting a lot more rubbish to be found. We were behind a lot of other volunteers, and some of the rubbish could've already been swept into the sea or covered up by pebbles and sand.

I loved seeing volunteers from all backgrounds and ages, it really showed that everyone does care about the environment and that's an amazing message to share. Everyone was cracking on with their children or dogs by their sides, working as teams to dig out some items.

When we started to reach the Pyramids, we were running out of beach. We started to follow a trail of rubbish up towards the common and Southsea Castle, as this waste was so close to the sea, it would eventually make it's way there.

A lot of the waste we found were plastic bottle lids, beer bottle lids, cigarette butts, plastic and glass bottles and there were a lot of plastic bags that were stuck in some of the sea defences.

It seems like a lot of areas down the beach get forgotten about by cleaners. Southsea gets a lot of events in this area and there were leavings from events just left there. Cable ties and suspension type clamps just left behind bushes, I think the council need to be more vigilant of event teams cleaning up to make sure they leave the area as they found it.

Caught red handed? Cheeky straw left abandoned. There's great alternatives for straws; paper and reusable metal straws!

We found a dead star fish, poor thing.

When we went back to the station where we began the clean, it was great to see all of the hard work of the volunteers, and that some of the findings where being separated into recyclable piles. I know it's not good to actually find all of this rubbish, it's a very strange experience that you want to find rubbish, but it would be better if there was not this amount amongst the beach and surrounding areas. For the sake of the wildlife, public and their dogs, children and for the environment. Some of the waste washes up on the beach from boats, such as ropes, fish hooks and bits of wood.

This was such a rewarding experience and I thoroughly recommend volunteering your time to causes like this. I can't wait to do more, and I've been doing more research into recycling and waste for my local area, as certain items can and can't be recycled in areas across the U.K.

After we gave over our rubbish bags we took some blog photos, as you can see there are very photogenic areas around Southsea and it would've been rude not to.

Me and my findings.

Behind the scenes photo of Sophie shooting for her blog post.

I'm really getting my teeth into becoming more environmentally aware and I'm loving it, it can take it's toll learning about the harsh realities of human society and the affect it has on our planet. I'm looking forward to sharing more information on my blog and social media pages.

Above is the team photo that was taken, you can't see myself and Sophie, but I think I can see my arm. As mentioned before it was great to see so many people give up their time on a Sunday morning and I look forward to my next clean up.

Have you been to a clean ups or have any environment posts? I'd love to have a read, comment your links below.

Here are some other blogs to read if you're curious about being eco friendly; Alanna and Lizz.

I hope you've enjoyed this post!

Love Saffron x