LOVEmyBEACH – Help protect the coast from pollution incidents

Keep Britain Tidy project LOVEmyBEACH is calling on all regular beach users to help identify and report signs of coastal pollution to help protect the North West coastline.

Thanks to the hard work of LOVEmyBEACH volunteers and the Turning Tides Partnership, the North West coast is the cleanest and safest it has ever been, but pollution incidents still occur occasionally. Coastal pollution has the potential to harm our beaches, seas and wildlife, so LOVEmyBEACH is calling on beach users to help See it. Report it and Prevent it.

Although all of our bathing waters are of a great standard, the various sources of pollution can impact bathing water quality while also being unpleasant for beach users. That’s why LOVEmyBEACH is calling on regular beach users to help spot pollution and report it to the relevant authority.

Emily Parr, Fylde Beach Care Officer says: “Major pollution incidents are well reported, enabling swift action to prevent further damage. In comparison, minor pollution incidents often go unreported and have the potential to cause ongoing and significant environmental damage. Regular beach visitors are likely to be the first people to spot these smaller incidents, maybe just by noticing a change to the usual appearance of an area or unusual occurrences.

“We can all play a part in protecting the environment and now we have created a free toolkit to help regular beach visitors be our eyes and ears on the ground so that pollution incidents can be swiftly reported and the appropriate action can be taken.

“This will mean that our beaches are even cleaner and that we are preventing damage to our oceans and wildlife.”

Once the relevant authorities are aware, they will be able to investigate and take action, hopefully preventing further damage.

To help identify coastal pollution and know how and where to report it, LOVEmyBEACH have created a new leaflet, with information on the different types of pollution and what to do if you see it. This is available for anyone to download for free from the LOVEmyBEACH website – https://lovemybeach.org/resources/

The most common signs of pollution that might be noticed are:

• Signs of sewage (e.g. sewage solids, pipes discharging dirty water, fungus growing or grey clouds around a pipe).
• A significantly large rainbow coloured film or thick sludge, indicating oil
• Abnormally high levels of litter or dumped waste. Or large quantities of one particular material e.g. a deluge of microplastics
• The presence of a new substance or material on the beach, e.g. palm oil

Together we can keep our beaches and seas clean and free of pollution!

For printed copies of the leaflet, please contact [email protected]