SAS Beach Clean Marine Litter Educational Facts

SAS Background

·  Environmental Charity – SAS were formed in 1990 – By a group of Cornish surfers who were simply sick of getting sick - We now campaign to protect the UK’s waves, oceans, waves and beaches for everyone to enjoy safely and sustainably.

·  Sustainable Achievable Solutions – All SAS campaigns are designed to give YOU, your FAMILY and your COMMUNITY the information and opportunity to make a real and noticeable difference

Marine Litter Facts and Figures

·  The amount of marine litter on the UK’s beaches has increased by over 100% in the last 15 years – Where there was 1000 tonnes there is now 2000 and it seems that it’s still rising

·  There are approximately 2000 items of marine litter for every km of UK beaches – See if you can take a single step without being able to find a piece

·  Over 60% of all marine litter is plastic –

·  One Plastic Bottle – Can take up to 1000 years to break down in the marine environment

·  Hundreds of years to breaking down – Plastics simply break down into smaller and smaller pieces and each plastic item will do nothing but harm to the marine environment. From turtles mistaking plastic bags for jelly fish to 1 million seabirds dying each year from the ingestion of or entanglement in marine litter to small fish mistaking micro-plastics for fish eggs, the impact that plastic is having on our marine environment is catastrophic.

·  4.5 Trillion cigarette butts are littered across the world each year – Each one is made up of 15,000 plastic fibres , can take up to 12 years to break down and can pollute 8 litres of water

·  Sewage Related Debris (SRD) – Over 2 billion sanitary items, such as cotton buds (100 for every km of beach), wipes and other even more disgusting things are flushed down the toilet every year in the UK. These block our sewers and cause raw sewage to enter our beaches. Our toilets are NOT ‘wet’ bins!

·  ‘Think Before You Flush’ and only flush the ‘4 P’s’ (Poo, Pee, Paper and Puke) down their toilets.

·  SAS Marine Litter Campaigns – Encourage volunteers to become SAS members and to engage with specific campaigns such as Return To Offender, Protect Our Waves, Think Before You Flush and FOGs. Information on all of these can be found at www.sas.org.uk

Props

Props are a fantastic way of giving life and texture to the marine litter education talk. Some simple yet very effective props are; a plastic bottle to hold when talking about how long plastic takes to break down in the marine environment, a clear bucket full of seawater with a cigarette butt demonstrating how much water can be polluted by one butt, a selection of litter from that beach that you found on a quick walk before they got there and some Sewage Related Debris to demonstrate the need to “Think Before You Flush”.

If you have any queries email . Thanks, SAS