Beach litter-pick family are real eco-champions
A WELSH family have spent four years devoting their weekends to cleaning a beach – after being shocked by what’s floating in our waters. From sanitary towels and needles to bags of waste, photographs taken by Jules O’Shea reveal the grim tide of rubbish being swept ashore. The 47-year-old and her family live in the capital but spend much of their free time at Pendine Sands.
Together with her partner, Tim Rees, 44, and their three children, she has been cleaning the beach for around four years.
But some of their most recent finds show just how many disgusting items are being dumped into our oceans. “We’ve found all sorts of stuff there,” explained Jules. “We had a couple of lobster tags. Lots and lots of ghost net and fishing rope, which we try and find a new home for at Morfa Bay Adventure whenever possible.
“A freezer, lots of soft polythene gets washed in on certain tides and winds – including sanitary products.
“Last year a group of women and their babies were sat a few feet from a tangle of seaweed with sanitary towel backing tangled in it, and were completely oblivious – it seems as if unless people actively look for rubbish they are almost ‘rubbish blind.’
“We’ve a soft toy that we dug out of the sand four or five years ago, washed a few times, and is still my son’s favourite toy.
“Most of the beach rubbish is probably from boats, though there’s also a lot of farm-animal feed bags that come downriver. Oh, and hundreds and hundreds of balloons too.”
The family’s clean-up process kicked off when they started to find some strange things at the beach – it all went from there, and they’ve continued to litter-pick the area ever since.
They take bags with them to carry the waste, and if they find anything particularly big they take their car to remove it from the beach.
The five of them spend around two hours there each time they visit.
It’s also been good for the kids – Isaac Rees, six, Emi Chubb, 13 (Jules’ step-daughter) and Mitch O’Shea, 16 – who have learned to really hate littering as a consequence.
Jules said: “They are really good at [litter-picking]. We have a bit of a game now – who is going to find the strangest thing that day?”
Jules also admitted it’s helped her to think about littering more.
“The plastic thing – it was an eyeopener,” she said. “We have tried hard to cut down on our plastic consumption, which is really difficult with a family, but there are small changes everyone could make, that doesn’t cost a lot of money.
“[Plastic] is in everything and don’t even about it.
“I never used to you think think that sanitary towels may have plastic in them but there are alternative solutions.”
Jules also explained the number of balloons the family have found has prompted her to campaign for them to be banned from being let off in public places.
She has written to councils to ask them to consider putting measures in place.
Jules said: “I’ve never liked littering – I’ve always told people off if I have seen them doing it.
“The needles are bad, and it always seems to be the youngest that finds them – luckily he knows not to pick them up.”
Jules said the team at Keep Wales Tidy collect the rubbish the family pick up as they can’t always get rid of it themselves.
Now she’s calling on more people to consider how they consume plastic.
“We are going to have to do something about it – it’s just not going away,”