New findings from the MCS on the pollution of UK beaches

Posted 5 years ago

Findings from the Marine Conservation Society’s (MCS) national beach clean up found that in a 4 day period, 16,000 drinks containers were found and nearly 11 tonnes of litter was cleared from the coastline.

With over 10,000 volunteers and 437 beaches, the MCS found from this years survey that there was, on average, 558 items of litter on every 100 metres of beach surveyed in the UK. The most common item being polystyrene and plastic, cigarette stubs coming in second and glass coming in third.

From these findings, the charity are calling for the need for a comprehensive deposit return scheme (DRS). The dangers of plastics on our beaches are already relatively well known, but MCS would like for glass bottles to be included in the DRS as these, along with metal cans that also pose a threat to marine life, birds and animals.

What is a Deposit Return Scheme?

The way I like to think of it is this – with a DRS, you buy the contents of a bottle (glug glug, delicious smoothie), but only borrow the bottle. The tiny deposit paid on top of the drink is fully refundable once the empty bottle is returned. This bottle can then be recycled or (even better!) reused.

Fiona Nicholls, Greenpeace

Norway, as well as others, have a DRS in place thin which they see 96% of all plastic bottles returned.

The Scottish Government have agreed to back the DRS but the Welsh and English Government proposals have halted.

iHasco’s Beach Clean Up

You might remember back in August, iHasco took part in one of the MCS’s Ocean cleanups. We had a great day doing our bit for the environment! If you are interested in doing a beach clean-up with your organisation, the MCS regularly do clean-ups all around the country!

MCS Fundraising Update

We always try to do our part in our company to help the environment in various ways. We collect the milk bottle caps to take them to a recycling place as our local recycling doesn’t take them, we collect batteries to be recycled, and we have recycling bins dotted all around the offices.

But alongside this, we also partnered with the MCS this year and we are currently up to £3446 out of our £4000 target!

Environmental Awareness

Do you think that there is more that your company could be doing to help the environment? Or would you like to know more about how to address our responsibilities at work to reduce negative environmental impact? Our Environmental Awareness Course is broken down into 3 easy sections; what is happening to the environment globally, how workplaces are affecting the environment and how individuals can improve their carbon footprint.

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