Surfers Against Sewage Litter Picks

Surfers Against Sewage is a marine conservation charity that has expanded their ‘beach cleans’ to inland rivers, mountains and urban areas because almost all rubbish in these areas will eventually make it to the sea via wind, rain and rivers. Litter in streets will find its way into storm drains and straight into the water ways.

We interviewed our local SAS rep Vicki Chilcott on Saturday 13 April 2019 after her Marlborough litter pick:

Litter Brand Audit

SAS has launched a brand-new auditing tool, to help volunteers record the companies most commonly behind the items that are being picked up at the same time.

All you need to do is take down the brand names of the products you collect and tally the amount for each brand in Surfers Against Sewage online form at https://www.sas.org.uk/brands/

This new toolkit comes almost ten years after the charity pioneered the first Plastic Pollution Audit, which highlighted the original ‘Dirty Dozen’ – the top 12 companies whose plastic was most commonly found on UK beaches.

The audit, which was launched in 2006, saw almost 600 pieces of identifiable marine litter returned back to the companies producing them as part of the charity’s ‘Return to Offender’ campaign. Among them, the top offenders included Nestle, Coca Cola, Walkers, Kraft, Tesco, Mars and Unilever, as well as other well-known household brands like PepsiCo, United Biscuits, Carlsberg, Co-op and Asda.

This data will be collated by SAS head office and used as evidence on the consultation for producer responsibility. The consultation can be found on gov.uk and is called “consultation on reforming the UK packaging producer responsibility system”. This survey is for everyone to do, individuals as well as businesses and charities.

SAS wants to create more awareness to the problem of plastic pollution on our doorsteps as well as the ocean and by collating the evidence we can send that directly to government to create change.

For more information, visit www.sas.org.uk/news/surfers-against-sewage-to-take-on-dirty-dozen-brands-as-part-of-big-spring-beach-clean-2019/