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World Clean Up Day – 15th September 2018.
Millions of volunteers in over 150 countries are uniting to clean up the world in one day on 15th September 2018.

 It may be ambitious, but it is desperately needed. In the last few years we have seen the devastation that plastic has caused to our planet. In Mumbai, volunteers undertook the task of cleaning Versova Beach. In 21 months, 5.3 million kgs of trash and plastic were removed from a 2.5km stretch of beach. You couldn’t see a grain of sand on the beach prior to the clean-up. It was just a sea of impenetrable trash. Labelled the world’s largest beach clean, Mumbai recognised the damage that plastic is causing and it banned all disposable plastic to help address the problem. Turtles have recently been seen on the same beach, the first time in 20 years.

In Bali, on 24 February 2018 it took 20,000 people to clean up the beaches of trash. Most of the plastic was coming from neighbouring countries, but Bali recognised that tourism was suffering as people were put off by the dirty beaches.

More recently, the Dominican Republic is feeling the plastic pain. A local beach is so strewn with plastic that the sea water is barely visible. 500 public workers were called in to deal with the crisis, including the military. 30 tonnes of plastic were collected in 3 days alone.

Some smaller countries rely upon tourism and fishing to survive. Both of these industries are at risk from the plastic crisis. Many Governments are realising this and taking action, yet our country seems to be doing very little. There are thousands of groups forming on social media and by other means, all with a common goal. We all want change and we want it now. Leave it any longer, and our planet might not survive this onslaught. In the 8 months since the finale of Blue Planet, what has changed ? Supermarkets are still using just as much plastic. We don’t have a bottle return scheme and we don’t even have a unified national approach to recycling. We are falling behind many other countries. If our leaders don’t take action, we all have to be responsible and reduce plastic ourselves.

Is it worth £1 to buy a bottled drink which lasts you a few minutes, but then takes over 400 years to degrade ?

World Clean Up Day falls over the weekend of 14th to 17th September 2018, which is the Great British Beach Clean organised by the Marine Conservation Society. LitterBugs have registered Amble and Hauxley as part of the campaign. It would be great if as many people as possible got involved. Whilst the North Sea isn’t anywhere near as bad as some other oceans, you can still see a gradual increase in plastic reaching our shores.

You can get in touch with us on FaceBook under LitterBugs, or email us – litterbugsnorthumberland@gmail.com

"I met some wonderful people and really felt that my work helped make a difference to my local area."

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