Agincare goes litter picking… On the beaches!
Yesterday, Agincare team members rallied at our head office in Portland, litter-pickers in hand, to take part in the Marine Conservation Society’s Great British Beach Clean! Groups from the office volunteered their time to tackle litter on Dorset’s iconic Chesil Beach as part of the nationwide event, and the hunt was on.
We also took our teams closer to home in Castletown, from the streets near HQ, to Black Barge, to coves near Portland Castle.
We love where we live, and we’re always looking for ways to contribute to the communities around Agincare. This national initiative is a brilliant way to improve the beauty of our habitat, and the environment of local wildlife.
What is The Great British Beach Clean?
Organised by the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) to face the problem of pollution, the Great British Beach Clean is a yearly event, feeding into the larger work of the International Coastal Clean-up (ICC).
The benefits of the clean are twofold; firstly, to remove harmful rubbish from our local wildlife, and secondly to record the rubbish found, report to the MCS, and they will then use the findings to campaign for greater change with litter laws. The previous successes of this have included helping to ban microplastics in personal care products and introducing a plastic bag charge, to name a few.
As well as the sharp jump in face masks and gloves, drinks containers continue to pollute UK beaches. An average of 30 drinks containers were found per 100m of beach surveyed this year once again showing the need for a Deposit Return Scheme.
– Marine Conservation Society
Doing our bit
Personal safety and hygiene have never been more important. As a result, the last 18 months have seen a skyrocketing in single-use plastics.
Agincare’s head office team no longer work remotely, but we protect ourselves and each other with masks and PPE, all designed by necessity to be throwaway. Because of this, disposable masks were one particular item the beach clean team were looking out for in their rubbish roundup.
Organiser Deborah Boyd was thrilled with the communal effort:
It was great, there was good teamwork and everyone chipped in! It was actually fairly easy to organise, and the team we have were very open to giving their time to the effort. It’s important to everyone to help the environment.
We collected a fair bit of plastic as you would imagine, but also plenty of drinks containers and also fishing nets and general rubbish too.
– Deborah Boyd
If you want to muck in to muck out the environment, the MCS provides many useful guides and resources. As for us, we’ll be glad to support the work of eco groups in our day to day lives. That’s because looking for litter is a full time job!
