There’s been an 80 per cent drop in the number of plastic bags washed up on UK’s beaches, but other forms of plastic pollution have increased
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It’s August. It’s the height of the holiday season and millions of us are heading to the beach. And while the traffic jams, queues for ice cream and, possibly, the inclement weather are likely to remain an unchangeable aspect of the British seaside holiday experience, there is one thing that has changed. And changed for the better.
In the past just getting into the sea often meant that you had to first negotiate a tide of discarded plastic bags. But, in a rare bit of positive environmental news, according to a beach litter survey conducted by the Marine Conservation Society (MCS), there has been an 80 per cent drop in the number of plastic bags washed up on British beaches over the last decade. The reason for this, the group says, is because of the introduction of a mandatory payment for single-use plastic bags picked up in shops. The law, which was introduced in 2011, means shoppers pay anywhere from 5p (Wales only) to 25p for a bag. It’s not much but it seems to have been enough to make many of us reconsider taking one. And that’s had an impact on the state of our beaches. Ten years ago, an average of five plastic carrier bags were found on every hundred-metre stretch of British beach. In 2023 it had dropped to one plastic carrier bag every hundred metres.
Lizzie Price, the Marine Conservation Society’s Beachwatch Manager said of the survey results: ‘It is brilliant to see policies on single-use plastics such as carrier bag charges working. There is no doubt that these policies have been extremely successful in reducing this frequently littered item. But we cannot afford to rest on our laurels.’
And she’s certainly right about not resting on our laurels, because although plastic carrier bag littering is down, littering of almost all other forms is up. The Marine Conservation Survey showed that 9 out of 10 beach litter items are made from plastic, and drinks-related litter, such as bottles and cans, were found on 97 per cent of UK beaches surveyed last year eight million pieces of plastic make their way into the ocean every day, 80 per cent of all studied marine debris is plastic and that there might be 5.25 trillion bits of macro and microplastic floating about the open oceans. It goes without saying that this tsunami of plastic waste is having an impact on the world’s marine environments with studies showing that an estimated 100,000 marine mammals (dolphins, seals, whales) and turtles and a million sea birds are killed by marine plastic pollution every year.
Addressing this, Price said: ‘We need broader policies that charge or ban more single-use items where possible, such as the proposed deposit return schemes for plastic bottles, cans, and glass. We must move quicker towards a society that repairs, reuses, and recycles.”
The Marine Conservation Society have organised more than a hundred beach clean-up days for the 2024 Great British Beach Clean, which takes place between the 20-29 September.
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