700m of sand and 1,630 bits of rubbish

Wednesday 24 January 2018

A Jersey 'eco-warrior' is urging islanders to take more care of our beaches after finding 1,630 pieces of rubbish, nearly all of them bits of plastic, on a short stretch of beach at Greve d'Azette.

Sheena Brockie, from the Good Jersey Life, has joined forces with local charity Littlefeet Environmental for the plastic-busting project. The charity recently collected over 770kg of rubbish at Ouaisne Bay and La Pulente during their 'Big Channel Islands Beach Clean,' including a hundred plastic bottles, nylon ropes and straws, syringes, an inflatable pool tube, and a number of pillows and lobster pots.

The eco-warrior, who challenged herself to live a year without waste last year, launched a war against plastic in March 2017. She has been campaigning to get rid of plastic packaging around local produce and also convinced several pubs and restaurants to drop their plastic straws for eco-friendly alternatives.

But last Sunday, she realised that there is still a lot more to be done after a simple walk on the beach at Grève d'Azette. 

On a 700 metre stretch of beach, Sheena found a total of 1,630 pieces of rubbish, with only six of them not made of plastic, in just 75 minutes. Among the items collected were over a hundred pieces of nylon rope, 99 bottle caps, 52 straws and 12 lighters.

Pictured: Sheena Brockie found hundreds of "brittle and broken pieces of plastic rolled into tiny balls by the sea and sand," on her walk. (The Good Jersey Life)

More worryingly, she found over 360 small pieces of plastic, "each one the size of a 10p piece or smaller." Sheena explained that those micro plastics, "brittle and broken pieces of plastic rolled into tiny balls by the sea and sand," were actually the reason she went on her walk on Sunday. After finding some of them on the beach during a previous walk, something which which worried her, she decided "...to see just how bad the situation was."

In a blog post cataloging what she had found on her walk, she wrote: "I walk this beach often, and with my long-legged stride I just pick rubbish up as I march along.  But when you slow things down and stop to look properly, it is such a different story.  More and more plastic comes into view, you only need to kneel in one place to get handfuls of small, brittle and broken pieces plastic.

"It’s easy to see how these pieces of plastic have broken down from larger pieces which have grown brittle in the elements. Getting smaller and smaller, but not degrading. A finite resource for a throw-away culture."

While she was "horrified" by the amount of bigger pieces she found, Sheena says "the small stuff is even scarier" as it all breaks down and becomes fish food. But by sharing her findings, she hopes will convince other islanders to recycle or even say goodbye to single-use plastic.

She said: "We make our choices when we purchase an item, so why should it be someone else’s responsibility to ensure it is disposed of in the best environmental way possible. We create waste by our own actions and then it should be our own responsibility to manage that.

"If you don’t have kerb-side collection then petition your parish. Find your local recycling point and incorporate dropping off recycling into your normal routine and you are more likely to keep it up as a habit - make it an efficient process and take pride in ‘doing your bit.’"

The eco-warrior has also decided to take things further and has joined forces with local charity Littlefeet Environmental to organise a beach clean at Grève d'Azette on 28 January at 11:00. The charity recently held its Big Channel Islands Beach Clean, collecting over 700kg of rubbish on two beaches alone in one weekend. 400 volunteers took part in Jersey, collecting 335kg in Ouaisne Bay and 440kg at La Pulente. Among a hundred plastic bottles, nylon ropes and straws, they also found syringes, an inflatable pool tube, and a number of pillows and lobster pots.

The Littlefeet team said: "Microplastics are a huge global issue and as marine debris float loose in our oceans, over time it breaks down from one discarded item into thousands, causing a much wider spread problem. And while at our clean-up,s we remove all the debris we find, the majority of this is small bits of rope and plastics. So we thought we would focus on microplastics this weekend teaming up with Sheena, at the Good Jersey Life and work with our volunteers to bring awareness to this issue."

Sheena is hoping many will take part this Sunday for what will be Littlefeet Environmental's first 'micro-plastics' beach clean. For the eco-warrior, it is crucial people understand that every bit counts: "Each single action taken by one single person makes a huge difference. Other people will follow a positive example. There are seven billion people in the world? 'What difference can one person make?,' says seven billion people!"