Chichester Harbour springs into action: over 250kg of rubbish cleared!

The collective effort of these organisations resulted in the collection of 79 bags of litter, weighing approximately 260 kg, thanks to the dedication of 170 volunteers. Sue Nash, Environment Lead at Dell Quay Sailing Club and the Chichester Harbour Federation, expressed her gratitude for the overwhelming support for the event and highlighted the significant amount of litter prevented from polluting the Harbour. She commented, ‘Members and their children turned out to help clean up, saving a huge amount of litter from entering the Harbour. One thing that the volunteers found hard to believe was the amount of dog poo picked up into bags that had then been left by the shoreline and around the paths. This seems increasingly to be happening – the worst part has been done, but then it is left!’

Lissie Pollard from the Final Straw Foundation ran a public clean-up event in Emsworth on the day. ‘Emsworth itself looks fairly clean, but just around the town and the shoreline, we collected nearly 80kg of rubbish with members of the public and volunteers from Emsworth Slipper Sailing Club. Thank you so much to all the fantastic helpers who came along; it makes a visible difference to the town. So much of what was collected was food and drinks waste packaging, and it really highlights the changes we need to some of these disposable items that we see littered time and again. Switching to reusable items and asking manufacturers to make packaging more sustainable would really help.’

Laura Kameen, Environment Lead at Bosham Sailing Club, shared her team's experience: "Initially, our volunteers were uncertain about the amount of litter they would find. However, our eagle-eyed litter hunters collected 10 bags from the quay, dinghy park, Cutmill shore, and Rythe End. The volunteers were particularly shocked by the volume of plastic at Rythe End, including hundreds of plastic pellets, or 'nurdles', found within the seaweed. These findings were reported to the Great Nurdle Hunt, an organisation dedicated to raising awareness about plastic pollution. Volunteers also spotted multiple Mermaids Purses at the site. These can be recorded via The Great Eggcase Hunt and help feed into the body of knowledge on the distribution of British sharks, skates and rays, so next time we will make sure we take photos and identify the eggcases using the app.’The Great British Spring Clean 2024 is taking place from March 15 to 31. We encourage everyone to pledge to pick up a bag of litter – or more – and join us in our mission to tidy up our coastlines.