Late-night revellers leave city beach in ‘horrendous’ state
CARDIFF Bay wasn’t the only area to be blighted by piles of litter over the bank holiday weekend.
Swansea Beach was left in a shocking state by late-night revellers.
The scenes prompted one visitor to the site yesterday – Ellouise Slee – to warn: “Until it is all cleaned, don’t bring your dogs down here, your kids – it’s absolutely horrendous.”
Together with her mum Nicola Slee and her seven-year-old son Myles Veckman, Emma joined other beach cleaner groups early yesterday to help clean up the mess left behind.
Her efforts were an attempt to stop young families hurting themselves before heading there to enjoy the dry weather.
Between yesterday and the previous day, the family discovered nails, drugs, needles, lighters, gas canisters, used condoms, kegs of beer, knives, disposable BBQ sets, scissors, alcohol bottles and cans, and countless shards of broken glass. In one area where there had been a bonfire, Myles managed to find 150 nails.
Miss Slee said: “I live in West Cross and we are down the beach every single day and seeing this is absolutely disgusting. Today and the last week has been horrendous. It’s absolutely appalling and if this is what our next generation is going to be like I’m actually worried.
“I know a lot of my friends have tried to approach them and the language they have been met with is terrible. It makes you worried to approach them. I think a lot of people think it’s just students, and don’t get me wrong, it is a lot of students, but it is not just them, you also get families with kids leaving rubbish behind as well.
“We’ve found nails, bottles, small packets with drugs inside, needles, lighters, laughing gas canisters, condoms, kegs of beer which have been melted onto fires, knives, BBQ sets, scissors – you would not believe the amount of glass, it is absolutely obscene. It’s everywhere. I would not be happy to leave kids take their shoes off on the beach or to walk pets along there.”
The 32-year-old called for people to be responsible and take their rubbish home with them after their visit to the beach, highlighting the potential detrimental effect on the environment and the safety of others.
She said: “I understand there is not a massive amount people can do but maybe we need cameras there and need to be naming and shaming people. If we don’t pick it up it’s all going to be on the ocean floor.
“Families are going to go down there over the next few days with the nice weather we’re having, and that’s what we want, but now we have to be cautious and clean up after lazy idiots. I had to put a warning out on social media this morning telling people not to come down to the beach until it was cleaned – it was that bad.
“People have got to take a bag down with them, it is really not hard to do that and take their rubbish away with them. There are so many kids coming to pick up rubbish on these mornings, not only my son. They have got better morals than the adults.”