Our First Beach Clean

Here at Jimmy Green Marine, we are lucky enough to be based in the East Devon village of Beer, on the beautiful Jurassic Coast which is a World Heritage Site. We can enjoy the wonderful beaches, cliff top walks and stunning scenery everyday coming to work.  

Beer village has a small beach which is popular with the local population and tourists alike. It is home to fishing boats, sailing dinghies, beach huts - for both locals and visitors and several beach cafes at the top of the shingle beach. The waters are safe for swimming, kayaking and paddleboarding in clement weather. The white limestone south and east facing cliffs, make the bay safe for water activities in winds from the south-west clockwise around to the north-east, forming a stunning backdrop and a welcome sun trap.

Team Jimmy Green wanted to take an active part in keeping our local beach clean, so we got in touch with Clean Jurassic Coast, a local charity who organise Beach Cleans all along the Jurassic Coast.

Clean Jurassic Coast is a community interest company and a not-for-profit organisation formed from local volunteers. Their aim is to keep our beaches litter free and in so doing, prevent litter from going into the oceans. They organise beach cleans with companies, community groups and independent beach clean activists along the Jurassic Coast.

The beach is the beating heart of the community in the village and consequently cared for by many local volunteers and by the parish council. At first glance, Beer Beach does appear to be relatively clean, but when you look a little closer, it is surprising how much litter can be collected with a diligent and concerted search effort. We were certainly in for a shock at some of the items we would find and collect during our mission.

On Thursday 4th August, a group of ten members from Team Jimmy Green met Roy from Clean Jurassic Coast, down on the hard at the bottom of Sea Hill in Beer. We felt very fortunate that it was a lovely sunny morning.  After a health and safety briefing, bags and pickers were handed out to everyone and we were ready for our first beach clean.

We started from the hard and we were off, working our way over to the eastern end of the beach, locally known as King’s Isle, spreading out as a search team from the top of the beach down to the water’s edge. We then turned and combed the beach across to the Western end, locally known as Bob’s Knob and finally back to the hard in the middle. It didn’t take long before we were finding litter including broken plastic, plastic bottles, drink cans, fishing line, bottle tops and many other items. We gradually filled our bags with rubbish.  After about an hour or so of assiduous litter hunting, we were back on the hard by the Heritage Hut. It was time to weigh the litter that we had managed to collect.  Roy consolidated all the bags, weighed them and gathered us round to announce the total weight of the litter collected which amounted to an astounding 8.3kg!

As a team we are proud to have made a difference to our local beach, it may still not be 100% litter free, but we have certainly made a difference.  We have also made a date in October for the other half of Team Jimmy Green to meet up with Roy for another beach clean.

cleanjurassiccoast.uk