Curbs on plastic waste ‘working’ as beach litter falls by a tenth

THE amount of litter on British beaches has fallen by 10 per cent in a year because of laws on cotton buds and single-use bags, a charity has said.

Litter-picking volunteers for the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) found an average of 385 items on each 100-metre stretch of beach this year, down from 425 in 2020 and 558 in 2019.

Efforts to curb problematic plastic waste from cotton buds and plastic bags were having an impact, with a fall in those types of litter, the MCS said.

Cotton buds moved out of the UK’S top 10 items of rubbish this year, with the number recorded the lowest in the beach clean’s 28-year history.

Six sticks were found for each 100 metres of surveyed beach, down from 15 last year, which the MCS said was a sign that policies to ban plastic cotton buds – by Scotland in 2019, followed by England last year – were working. Numbers of single-use plastic bags on beaches have also continued to drop, from an average of 13 per stretch of beach in 2013 to three this year.

The conservation charity called for policies that would end the manufacture and sale of more plastic products, as two thirds of the items collected were made of plastic or polystyrene.

The five most common litter items on beaches were plastic or polystyrene pieces, which made up 112 items for each 100 metres on average, followed by cigarette stubs, crisp and sweet packets and lolly sticks, plastic caps and lids and string or cord.

Nearly a third of beaches cleaned in the annual event had PPE litter, though masks were well down the list of the most common rubbish items found, ranking 59th out of 121.

Lizzie Prior, beachwatch manager at the MCS, said: “The downward trend we’re seeing in litter levels on UK beaches is a sign that the actions we’re taking at a personal, local and national level are working. But we can’t sit back and relax.”