Litter on beaches

I was right when I said that Chesil Beach was full of rubbish, with a coastal litter survey for the Marine Conservation Society today finding 385,659 individual pieces of litter on 374 popular beaches. Over a third of that comes from the public.

Lots of worthy comment in this article about needing dedicated litter reduction plans, incentives to recycle and so on, but one thing that may help are a few bins. I don't remember seeing any on Chesil Beach (admittedly, it's probably not so easy to install them there).

On Chesil Beach... there's rubbish

On Friday, I took the train to Weymouth to visit Dorset's Jurassic coast, Portland Bill and Chesil Beach.

Chesil Beach is an amazing geographical and geological wonder - a huge, 18 mile long bank of pebbles which start out large and become smaller the further you walk along the beach.

I was very lucky to see a beautiful sunset from the beach.

The beach has become more popular recently with the publication of Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach. Signs ask visitors not to take pebbles, but I noticed one family had commemorated their visit by writing on the pebbles.

I was less heartened to see, however, that rubbish is strewn all over the beach. This ranged from odd shoes, combs, plastic bottles, tin cans and drums to more natural detritus like wood and ropes.

It's a shame those signs that say 'don't take pebbles', don't also say 'but please take some rubbish away with you'.

That said, however this tin of pimento dulce (sweet paprika) intrigued me - had it floated all the way from Spain or Portugal?