A slightly less efficient trip compared to last year, but some records were broken, and given we are now hauling plastic 2.8km (1.7 miles) to get it back to skip we were all very happy with result. Plus we had some top chat this year.
Quick Facts & Figures
Another year has flown by, and we have more great news about our beach cleaning exploits. This year was different again, and all the better for it:
- 1.92 Tons (D&G Weighbridge) + Extra Trailer Load of Tires and Waste Oil Removed (150kg Approx). So we broke the 2 tons mark for the first time this year! 🙂
- Estimated Cost to Charity £1100 Approx.
- Estimated cost per kg – £0.52/kg (18p more than last year – but well below our pledge of £1/kg)
- 34% increase in apathy towards any type of meal containing tinned beans of any description.
How Did It Go?
The first thing to admit is that this year nearly didn’t happen. This sort of effort (although valuable) has always felt a bit futile (to me at least). And this year looking at the images of destroyed cities in Palestine & Ukraine and all of the environmental devastation happening as a side effect to so much human misery it was a bit of a “what can man do against reckless hate” situation.
But when I mentioned this to my son (11) he told me to sort myself out and get going. So I did. Thanks Ambrose. 🙂
We had a good group this year! As well as Cairo, Kujo, Shona, Ambrose, Isabella we also had Nick, and Dave (Dave literally turned up by chance and came back two days running).
We got stuck in to a new stretch of the beach that had not been touched at all, for years, there was so much degraded plastics. And also “grown in” plastic with plants that had grown in to it, and made it difficult to remove. Much of the rope on this section of the beach was very broken down, and the little fibre were blowing around by the thousand as we tried to remove them.
We completely filled the skip right to the top, I’m not sure if we managed that before. Thanks to David & Kenny from D&G Council for arranging that.
And well also this year took a trailer load of waste oil, tires, and another 8 bulk bags to the tip, because they wouldn’t fit in the skip.
I should explain where I think the waste soil comes from. . . . I think when fishing boats / trawlers change their engine oil, they take the waste oil out to sea with them and throw it overboard. These partially full drums then wash up on the shore. They are a real pain to deal with because the drum perish, and become brittle, and then they crack and the waste oil leaks all over the place. Used engine oil is nasty stuff as it has a lot of combustion by-products in it which are carcinogenic.
A quick word on costs. This year was more expense than last year. The costing around 18 pence more per kg removed. This was primarily because we had to hire a van to pick up the quad bike (Thank for doing that Cairo it saved me a huge drive) so we had to pay for that and for for the fuel to drive it up to Scotland.
Drones :-/
I am not a fan of drones. There are wonderful machines I suppose but being the majority of drones you can buy that are any good, and of a reasonable price are from DJI, there are serious ethical considerations with buying them, and therefore funding bad actors.
However, there is a trade off between their use and trying to get across the scale of the problem we are dealing with, so I found a second hand DJI Drone, which I could use with 3rd party software and purchased with my own money for trip. I justified this on the basis that DJI did not profit from the sale, and they are not getting my data either owing to 3rd party software.
Anyway pictures:
And some video (I really like this one, and it was the principal reason for taking the drone) I will upload a edited video on the PAPP youtube channel at some point but the files are very large, and editing complicated.
At Camp 🙂
We followed previous years and stayed at a proper campsite this year. We had intended to pay for this, but the people who ran the campsite offered to refund us when they found out we were doing charity work so thanks for that!
Next Year
Still very keen on boat idea from last year.
We could use the drone to survey some inaccessible (by land) coves in the Southwest UK, and plan for a boat based project in 2028 – 2029 but, the Scottish beach I think has 1 or 2 years left in it.
Notes for next year:
- Really try to get more people on board.
- Fingers crossed for quad bike again.
- Be sure to book 2 skips.
- Buy more bulk bags.
- Buy new scales.
Thank Yous
- Thank you to our principal donors, we will email with an update.
- Thank you to Ian and team at Honda UK. The quad bike is a miracle machine and we really could not do the job effectively without it.
- Thanks to landowners for vehicle access.
- Thanks to Port William Campsite for offering the refund on campground fees.
- Thanks to everyone who came along giving up their time, and effort to make a small difference.
