According to a report by Hepper, there are approximately 50-75 trillion pieces of plastic and microplastics currently in the ocean. Approximately 593,043,485 pounds of plastic pollution float on the ocean’s surface. Only around 1% of all plastic pollution in the oceans is on the surface. The other 99% stays below the surface. Every year 1 million seabirds die from plastic pollution and 33% of all fish consumed contains plastic.
As part of our summer focus on plastic waste, staff from the practice took part in a beach cleaning at Hill Head Beach on Saturday 1st July.
When we arrived, we were pleasantly surprised to see that at first glance, the beach didn’t have lots of litter. Some of the people at the beach enquired about what we were doing and said that they also regularly pick up litter, which may explain why it appeared so rubbish free. However, as we started to work our way down the beach, we noticed that there were lots of small bits of plastic in and among the pebbles; bits of old plastic rope, cotton bud tips, bottle tops and sweet wrappers were common finds.
We took our time and worked our way from The Osborne View to the end of Hill Head at the Lee end of the beach. We picked up hundreds of pieces of small plastic and we hope that we may have made some small impact on the bigger picture.
We finished the day with a lovely meal at the Osborne View. The butternut squash ravioli and sticky toffee pudding were the highlight of the meal!
If anyone is interested in taking part in a beach clean Fareham Council will provide the litter pickers and bin bags. For more information, please click here
https://www.fareham.gov.uk/clean_and_tidy/beaches_and_foreshore/intro.aspx
