Marine Conservation Society

Since 2002, the Oceanarium has been involved with this campaign to do something about the terrible levels of litter around our coastline.

BACKGROUND

The Marine Conservation Society (MCS), is one of the top UK charities that care for our seas, shores and wildlife which aims to secure a future for our living seas, aiming to save our threatened sea life before it is lost forever.

The Oceanarium has been organising and coordinating Beachwatch events since 2002 and in 2025 alone has collected over 280 kilograms of rubbish from local beaches.

Our 'throw-away' consumer culture means that a growing number of unwanted plastic items are discarded into our seas and onto our beaches every year, posing a threat to both ourselves and wildlife. Litter is swamping our oceans and is washing up on beaches. It kills wildlife, looks disgusting, is a hazard to our health and costs millions to clear up.

Turtles mistake plastic bags for jellyfish and the bags block their stomachs, often leading to death from starvation. Seabirds mistake floating plastic litter for food, and over 90% of fulmars found dead around the North Sea have plastic in their stomachs.

MCS and International Coastal Clean Up surveys have shown year after year that plastics make up the majority of debris found on beaches, both in the UK and many other countries around the world. In the Southern hemisphere, half of all debris found on remote island beaches can be made of plastic. Litter comes from many sources - the public, fishing activities, sewage pipes and shipping, but it is all preventable.

MISSION

Organise Beachwatch events to clean the litter from 100 metres (100m) of a beach, record what is found and send the results to the MCS. The beach gets cleaned of unsightly and potentially dangerous rubbish and the results are combined with over 400 other national Beachwatch events. This provides some powerful evidence to influence government, industry and the public in tackling beach litter at source.