It was a lot more fun than I thought it was going to be and it was heart-warming to see so many people wanting to get involved and sort it out. But you know I also found it mildly depressing. It isn't until you actually look down to the beach that you realise quite how much rubbish there is. When I'm on a beach I'm usually looking across it and on the face of it you can actually think – oh this is quite clean...but once you start paying attention it’s a very different story.

Deborah Meaden MCS Ocean Ambassador, entrepreneur and 'Dragon's Den' investor attended the Great British Beach Clean at Sand Bay, Somerset

Includes the Great Channel Islands and Great Northern Irish

© Marine Conservation Society (MCS) 2017. All rights reserved. Registered Charity No: 1004005 (England & Wales); SC037480 (Scotland). Registered in England VAT No: 489 1505 17. 656-2017.

Is our 'on the go' lifestyle leaving us too busy to find a bin? This year’s Great British Beach Clean results showed litter from eating and drinking out and about makes up 20% of all the rubbish found on our beaches!

The whole country always seems to be ‘on the go’ and now our beaches appear to be paying the price for people treating the outdoors as a great big dustbin. We’re happy to dump at will rather than keep hold of litter until there’s a bin about.

138 pieces of 'on the go' litter were found, on average, per 100m of all the beaches cleaned and surveyed by our volunteers.

What’s ‘on the go’ litter?

Items from drinks cups to cutlery, foil wrappers to straws, packets to lolly sticks, plastic bottles to drinks cans, glass bottles to plastic cups.

2017 Report

Thank you for making the Great British Beach Clean 2017 the best yet! This September thousands of people headed to UK beaches to pick up litter and record their finds.

Just short of 7,000 volunteer beach cleaners picked up 255, 209 individual pieces of litter from 339 beaches. That's a staggering 718 bits of rubbish for every 100 metres cleaned!

It's a huge number and sadly a 10% rise in the amount of litter we picked up the previous year.

Massive thanks to everyone who took part! Whether you've organised an event or just turned up on the day and got to grips with gloves and litter pickers for the first time - your support is absolutely incredible!

As with previous years, tiny bits of plastic were the most commonly found items, in even greater numbers than in 2016.

The problem of plastic in our oceans is on the mainstream agenda – Sky Ocean Rescue, and BBC1's Blue Planet II have brought the issue into our living rooms. High street bars have stopped handing out plastic straws and microbeads in scrubs and gels are being banned.

That’s all fantastic! But it’s just the start - there's so much more to do.

We're on it, though, and we've more campaigns planned for the rest of the year and through into 2018 - and you can help.

Follow us on Twitter (@mcsuk) or like our Facebook page and support our appeal to stop the plastic tide.

See you in September 2018!

Lizzie Prior Beach and River Clean Project Officer

Wet wipe updateData from the 2017 Great British Beach Clean revealed a startling 94% rise in the number of wet wipes found on UK beaches – yuk!

Thanks to your hard survey work – we’re all over this one.

MCS collected over 10,000 signatures on our petition to the wet wipe industry body EDANA asking them to ensure members removed plastic from their flushable products and that flushable wipes complied with UK Water Industry standards.

Keep an eye across our social media feeds to see what happens next and don’t forget it’s just the 3Ps that go down the pan – pee, poo and paper.

Beach litter to bottles – turning litter into ‘stuff’During this years, Great British Beach Clean, we’ve been working collecting rigid marine plastics and cigarette stubs ready for them to be recycled into new products!

The cigarette stubs, continually in the top of 10 of most found items, will go to make outside hoarding boards.

We also asked our volunteers to separate out some kinds of rigid plastic for collection by TerraCycle. They remove obvious contamination, the plastic then goes through sorting, washing, drying, and grinding steps before being made into pellets which are used by packaging companies.

Look out for washing-up liquid bottles on sale in the UK next summer – made from the litter you collected!

You can

Find a bin

Take it home

Use reusable cups and bottles

Refuse straws

Businesses and local authorities can

Provide free drinking water

Not give out straws

Provide a discount for reusable cups

Reduce plastic packaging

Use easily recyclable packaging

So what can you do about it?

STOP the plastic tide

01989 566 017 W www.mcsuk.org facebook.com/mcsuk twitter.com/mcsuk Marine Conservation Society, Overross House, Ross Park, Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire HR9 7US

The Marine Conservation Society’s sustainable seafood and beach litter work is supported by players of People’s Postcode Lottery.

We must

There are three things you can do:

1 Sign our petition to the Governments

of the UK, Scotland and Wales calling for a levy on single-use throwaway items. The power to change the habits of our throwaway society is in their hands.

2 Sign our petition to the big fast food chains

demanding they replace the millions of plastic cups, stirrers, straws and cutlery they give out with reusable or biodegradable alternatives.

3 Donate to the MCS Stop the Plastic Tide Appeal

Make a one off donation or sign up to give monthly Account no: 90611751 Sort code: 20-39-64 Reference: PlasticAppeal

Take action at www.mcsuk.org/stop-the-plastic-tide

It was a lot more fun than I thought it was going to be and it was heart-warming to see so many people wanting to get involved and sort it out. But you know I also found it mildly depressing. It isn't until you actually look down to the beach that you realise quite how much rubbish there is. When I'm on a beach I'm usually looking across it and on the face of it you can actually think – oh this is quite clean...but once you start paying attention it’s a very different story.

Deborah Meaden MCS Ocean Ambassador, entrepreneur and 'Dragon's Den' investor attended the Great British Beach Clean at Sand Bay, Somerset

Includes the Great Channel Islands and Great Northern Irish

© Marine Conservation Society (MCS) 2017. All rights reserved. Registered Charity No: 1004005 (England & Wales); SC037480 (Scotland). Registered in England VAT No: 489 1505 17. 656-2017.

Is our 'on the go' lifestyle leaving us too busy to find a bin? This year’s Great British Beach Clean results showed litter from eating and drinking out and about makes up 20% of all the rubbish found on our beaches!

The whole country always seems to be ‘on the go’ and now our beaches appear to be paying the price for people treating the outdoors as a great big dustbin. We’re happy to dump at will rather than keep hold of litter until there’s a bin about.

138 pieces of 'on the go' litter were found, on average, per 100m of all the beaches cleaned and surveyed by our volunteers.

What’s ‘on the go’ litter?

Items from drinks cups to cutlery, foil wrappers to straws, packets to lolly sticks, plastic bottles to drinks cans, glass bottles to plastic cups.

2017 Report

Thank you for making the Great British Beach Clean 2017 the best yet! This September thousands of people headed to UK beaches to pick up litter and record their finds.

Just short of 7,000 volunteer beach cleaners picked up 255, 209 individual pieces of litter from 339 beaches. That's a staggering 718 bits of rubbish for every 100 metres cleaned!

It's a huge number and sadly a 10% rise in the amount of litter we picked up the previous year.

Massive thanks to everyone who took part! Whether you've organised an event or just turned up on the day and got to grips with gloves and litter pickers for the first time - your support is absolutely incredible!

As with previous years, tiny bits of plastic were the most commonly found items, in even greater numbers than in 2016.

The problem of plastic in our oceans is on the mainstream agenda – Sky Ocean Rescue, and BBC1's Blue Planet II have brought the issue into our living rooms. High street bars have stopped handing out plastic straws and microbeads in scrubs and gels are being banned.

That’s all fantastic! But it’s just the start - there's so much more to do.

We're on it, though, and we've more campaigns planned for the rest of the year and through into 2018 - and you can help.

Follow us on Twitter (@mcsuk) or like our Facebook page and support our appeal to stop the plastic tide.

See you in September 2018!

Lizzie Prior Beach and River Clean Project Officer

Wet wipe updateData from the 2017 Great British Beach Clean revealed a startling 94% rise in the number of wet wipes found on UK beaches – yuk!

Thanks to your hard survey work – we’re all over this one.

MCS collected over 10,000 signatures on our petition to the wet wipe industry body EDANA asking them to ensure members removed plastic from their flushable products and that flushable wipes complied with UK Water Industry standards.

Keep an eye across our social media feeds to see what happens next and don’t forget it’s just the 3Ps that go down the pan – pee, poo and paper.

Beach litter to bottles – turning litter into ‘stuff’During this years, Great British Beach Clean, we’ve been working collecting rigid marine plastics and cigarette stubs ready for them to be recycled into new products!

The cigarette stubs, continually in the top of 10 of most found items, will go to make outside hoarding boards.

We also asked our volunteers to separate out some kinds of rigid plastic for collection by TerraCycle. They remove obvious contamination, the plastic then goes through sorting, washing, drying, and grinding steps before being made into pellets which are used by packaging companies.

Look out for washing-up liquid bottles on sale in the UK next summer – made from the litter you collected!

You can

Find a bin

Take it home

Use reusable cups and bottles

Refuse straws

Businesses and local authorities can

Provide free drinking water

Not give out straws

Provide a discount for reusable cups

Reduce plastic packaging

Use easily recyclable packaging

So what can you do about it?

STOP the plastic tide

01989 566 017 W www.mcsuk.org facebook.com/mcsuk twitter.com/mcsuk Marine Conservation Society, Overross House, Ross Park, Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire HR9 7US

The Marine Conservation Society’s sustainable seafood and beach litter work is supported by players of People’s Postcode Lottery.

We must

There are three things you can do:

1 Sign our petition to the Governments of the UK, Scotland and Wales calling for a levy on single-use throwaway items.

The power to change the habits of our throwaway society is in their hands.

2 Sign our petition to the big fast food chains demanding they replace the millions of plastic cups, stirrers, straws and cutlery

they give out with reusable or biodegradable alternatives.

3 Donate to the MCS Stop the Plastic Tide Appeal Make a one off donation or sign up to give monthly

Account no: 90611751 Sort code: 20-39-64 Reference: PlasticAppeal

Take action at www.mcsuk.org/stop-the-plastic-tide

It was a lot more fun than I thought it was going to be and it was heart-warming to see so many people wanting to get involved and sort it out. But you know I also found it mildly depressing. It isn't until you actually look down to the beach that you realise quite how much rubbish there is. When I'm on a beach I'm usually looking across it and on the face of it you can actually think – oh this is quite clean...but once you start paying attention it’s a very different story.

Deborah Meaden MCS Ocean Ambassador, entrepreneur and 'Dragon's Den' investor attended the Great British Beach Clean at Sand Bay, Somerset

Includes the Great Channel Islands and Great Northern Irish

© Marine Conservation Society (MCS) 2017. All rights reserved. Registered Charity No: 1004005 (England & Wales); SC037480 (Scotland). Registered in England VAT No: 489 1505 17. 656-2017.

Is our 'on the go' lifestyle leaving us too busy to find a bin? This year’s Great British Beach Clean results showed litter from eating and drinking out and about makes up 20% of all the rubbish found on our beaches!

The whole country always seems to be ‘on the go’ and now our beaches appear to be paying the price for people treating the outdoors as a great big dustbin. We’re happy to dump at will rather than keep hold of litter until there’s a bin about.

138 pieces of 'on the go' litter were found, on average, per 100m of all the beaches cleaned and surveyed by our volunteers.

What’s ‘on the go’ litter?

Items from drinks cups to cutlery, foil wrappers to straws, packets to lolly sticks, plastic bottles to drinks cans, glass bottles to plastic cups.

2017 Report

Thank you for making the Great British Beach Clean 2017 the best yet! This September thousands of people headed to UK beaches to pick up litter and record their finds.

Just short of 7,000 volunteer beach cleaners picked up 255, 209 individual pieces of litter from 339 beaches. That's a staggering 718 bits of rubbish for every 100 metres cleaned!

It's a huge number and sadly a 10% rise in the amount of litter we picked up the previous year.

Massive thanks to everyone who took part! Whether you've organised an event or just turned up on the day and got to grips with gloves and litter pickers for the first time - your support is absolutely incredible!

As with previous years, tiny bits of plastic were the most commonly found items, in even greater numbers than in 2016.

The problem of plastic in our oceans is on the mainstream agenda – Sky Ocean Rescue, and BBC1's Blue Planet II have brought the issue into our living rooms. High street bars have stopped handing out plastic straws and microbeads in scrubs and gels are being banned.

That’s all fantastic! But it’s just the start - there's so much more to do.

We're on it, though, and we've more campaigns planned for the rest of the year and through into 2018 - and you can help.

Follow us on Twitter (@mcsuk) or like our Facebook page and support our appeal to stop the plastic tide.

See you in September 2018!

Lizzie Prior Beach and River Clean Project Officer

Wet wipe updateData from the 2017 Great British Beach Clean revealed a startling 94% rise in the number of wet wipes found on UK beaches – yuk!

Thanks to your hard survey work – we’re all over this one.

MCS collected over 10,000 signatures on our petition to the wet wipe industry body EDANA asking them to ensure members removed plastic from their flushable products and that flushable wipes complied with UK Water Industry standards.

Keep an eye across our social media feeds to see what happens next and don’t forget it’s just the 3Ps that go down the pan – pee, poo and paper.

Beach litter to bottles – turning litter into ‘stuff’During this years, Great British Beach Clean, we’ve been working collecting rigid marine plastics and cigarette stubs ready for them to be recycled into new products!

The cigarette stubs, continually in the top of 10 of most found items, will go to make outside hoarding boards.

We also asked our volunteers to separate out some kinds of rigid plastic for collection by TerraCycle. They remove obvious contamination, the plastic then goes through sorting, washing, drying, and grinding steps before being made into pellets which are used by packaging companies.

Look out for washing-up liquid bottles on sale in the UK next summer – made from the litter you collected!

You can

Find a bin

Take it home

Use reusable cups and bottles

Refuse straws

Businesses and local authorities can

Provide free drinking water

Not give out straws

Provide a discount for reusable cups

Reduce plastic packaging

Use easily recyclable packaging

So what can you do about it?

STOP the plastic tide

01989 566 017 W www.mcsuk.org facebook.com/mcsuk twitter.com/mcsuk Marine Conservation Society, Overross House, Ross Park, Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire HR9 7US

The Marine Conservation Society’s sustainable seafood and beach litter work is supported by players of People’s Postcode Lottery.

We must

There are three things you can do:

1 Sign our petition to the Governments of the UK, Scotland and Wales calling for a levy on single-use throwaway items.

The power to change the habits of our throwaway society is in their hands.

2 Sign our petition to the big fast food chains demanding they replace the millions of plastic cups, stirrers, straws and cutlery

they give out with reusable or biodegradable alternatives.

3 Donate to the MCS Stop the Plastic Tide Appeal Make a one off donation or sign up to give monthly

Account no: 90611751 Sort code: 20-39-64 Reference: PlasticAppeal

Take action at www.mcsuk.org/stop-the-plastic-tide

In 2018 we’ll be celebrating a quarter of a century of Great British Beach Cleans.

We’ll be in touch about how you can get involved and help us to make our 25th year really special!

14th – 17th September 2018 Make sure you save the dates!

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The UK’s beach litter story 2017

How much?

84

4,468

1,588

249

555

On average in the UK, 718 litter items were collected per 100 metres, which is an increase of 10% when compared to 2016.

Average number of litter items per 100m

Number of volunteers

% increase or decrease in litter since 2016

179

6

111

18

25

6,944

339

Number of beaches cleaned

10 %

13 %

7 %

11 %

21 %

26 %

491

911

253

677

701

Scotland

England

Islands

N. Ireland

Channel

Wales

Where did it come from?

Non–sourced 46.2% Hard to know where it’s from – mainly because it’s too tiny to identify.

Fishing 10.8%All the things from lobster pots to fishing nets, that help anglers and commercial fishermen catch seafood.

SRD 8.5% Sewage Related Debris is stuff that’s flushed down the loo but should go in the bin.

Medical 0.2%Not very nice – pill

packets to syringes.

Fly-tipped 1%Big stuff like TVs and tyres.

Shipping 2.9%Stuff lost, or thrown

overboard from small craft or massive ships.

Public 30.4% All the stuff that we, the public,

have a hand in helping get to the beach.

Together we’ve been cleaning and surveying beaches for nearly 25 years!

What did we find?Here's the top 10 items that were found during the Great British Beach Clean 2017.

Plastic / polystyrene pieces (0–50 cm)

225.3/100m

Packets (crisp, sweet, lolly, sandwich)

42.3/100m

Glass

40.4/100m

Cigarette stubs

34.5/100m ò

Caps & lids

32.9/100m ò

String / cord (thickness 0–1 cm)

31/100m

Wet wipes

27.4/100m

Cotton bud sticks 26.9/100m

Fishing line

18/100m

Cutlery / trays / straws 15.1/100m

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

It was a lot more fun than I thought it was going to be and it was heart-warming to see so many people wanting to get involved and sort it out. But you know I also found it mildly depressing. It isn't until you actually look down to the beach that you realise quite how much rubbish there is. When I'm on a beach I'm usually looking across it and on the face of it you can actually think – oh this is quite clean...but once you start paying attention it’s a very different story.

Deborah Meaden MCS Ocean Ambassador, entrepreneur and 'Dragon's Den' investor attended the Great British Beach Clean at Sand Bay, Somerset

Includes the Great Channel Islands and Great Northern Irish

© Marine Conservation Society (MCS) 2017. All rights reserved. Registered Charity No: 1004005 (England & Wales); SC037480 (Scotland). Registered in England VAT No: 489 1505 17. 656-2017.

Is our 'on the go' lifestyle leaving us too busy to find a bin? This year’s Great British Beach Clean results showed litter from eating and drinking out and about makes up 20% of all the rubbish found on our beaches!

The whole country always seems to be ‘on the go’ and now our beaches appear to be paying the price for people treating the outdoors as a great big dustbin. We’re happy to dump at will rather than keep hold of litter until there’s a bin about.

138 pieces of 'on the go' litter were found, on average, per 100m of all the beaches cleaned and surveyed by our volunteers.

What’s ‘on the go’ litter?

Items from drinks cups to cutlery, foil wrappers to straws, packets to lolly sticks, plastic bottles to drinks cans, glass bottles to plastic cups.

2017 Report

Thank you for making the Great British Beach Clean 2017 the best yet! This September thousands of people headed to UK beaches to pick up litter and record their finds.

Just short of 7,000 volunteer beach cleaners picked up 255, 209 individual pieces of litter from 339 beaches. That's a staggering 718 bits of rubbish for every 100 metres cleaned!

It's a huge number and sadly a 10% rise in the amount of litter we picked up the previous year.

Massive thanks to everyone who took part! Whether you've organised an event or just turned up on the day and got to grips with gloves and litter pickers for the first time - your support is absolutely incredible!

As with previous years, tiny bits of plastic were the most commonly found items, in even greater numbers than in 2016.

The problem of plastic in our oceans is on the mainstream agenda – Sky Ocean Rescue, and BBC1's Blue Planet II have brought the issue into our living rooms. High street bars have stopped handing out plastic straws and microbeads in scrubs and gels are being banned.

That’s all fantastic! But it’s just the start - there's so much more to do.

We're on it, though, and we've more campaigns planned for the rest of the year and through into 2018 - and you can help.

Follow us on Twitter (@mcsuk) or like our Facebook page and support our appeal to stop the plastic tide.

See you in September 2018!

Lizzie Prior Beach and River Clean Project Officer

Wet wipe updateData from the 2017 Great British Beach Clean revealed a startling 94% rise in the number of wet wipes found on UK beaches – yuk!

Thanks to your hard survey work – we’re all over this one.

MCS collected over 10,000 signatures on our petition to the wet wipe industry body EDANA asking them to ensure members removed plastic from their flushable products and that flushable wipes complied with UK Water Industry standards.

Keep an eye across our social media feeds to see what happens next and don’t forget it’s just the 3Ps that go down the pan – pee, poo and paper.

Beach litter to bottles – turning litter into ‘stuff’During this years, Great British Beach Clean, we’ve been working collecting rigid marine plastics and cigarette stubs ready for them to be recycled into new products!

The cigarette stubs, continually in the top of 10 of most found items, will go to make outside hoarding boards.

We also asked our volunteers to separate out some kinds of rigid plastic for collection by TerraCycle. They remove obvious contamination, the plastic then goes through sorting, washing, drying, and grinding steps before being made into pellets which are used by packaging companies.

Look out for washing-up liquid bottles on sale in the UK next summer – made from the litter you collected!

You can

Find a bin

Take it home

Use reusable cups and bottles

Refuse straws

Businesses and local authorities can

Provide free drinking water

Not give out straws

Provide a discount for reusable cups

Reduce plastic packaging

Use easily recyclable packaging

So what can you do about it?

STOP the plastic tide

01989 566 017 W www.mcsuk.org facebook.com/mcsuk twitter.com/mcsuk Marine Conservation Society, Overross House, Ross Park, Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire HR9 7US

The Marine Conservation Society’s sustainable seafood and beach litter work is supported by players of People’s Postcode Lottery.

We must

There are three things you can do:

1 Sign our petition to the Governments

of the UK, Scotland and Wales calling for a levy on single-use throwaway items. The power to change the habits of our throwaway society is in their hands.

2 Sign our petition to the big fast food chains

demanding they replace the millions of plastic cups, stirrers, straws and cutlery they give out with reusable or biodegradable alternatives.

3 Donate to the MCS Stop the Plastic Tide Appeal

Make a one off donation or sign up to give monthly Account no: 90611751 Sort code: 20-39-64 Reference: PlasticAppeal

Take action at www.mcsuk.org/stop-the-plastic-tide