MCS: 80% drop in plastic bags found per 100 meters of UK beaches

03 / 08 / 2024

By Marwa Nassar - -

The Marine Conservation Society (MCS), the UK’s leading ocean charity, uncovered 80% decline in the average number of plastic carrier bags found per 100 meters of UK beaches.

Lizzie Price, Beachwatch Manager at the Marine Conservation Society, said “It is brilliant to see policies on single-use plastics such as carrier bag charges working. There is no doubt that these policies have been extremely successful in reducing this frequently littered item. But we cannot afford to rest on our laurels.”

“Our volunteer surveys show 9 out of 10 beach litter items are made from plastic, and drinks-related litter, like bottles and cans, were found on 97% of UK beaches surveyed last year. We need broader policies that charge or ban more single-use items where possible such as the proposed deposit return schemes for plastic bottles, cans, and glass. We must move quicker towards a society that repairs reuses and recycles.”

The MCS has been running a beach litter survey for 30 years, in which volunteers record all litter that they find within a 100-meter stretch of beach. Although the charity’s beach cleaning initiative takes place year-round, the MCS collects a third of its data from volunteer surveys during its annual Great British Beach Clean, which this year runs from Friday 20th – Sunday 29th September.

Cully and Sully Soup are sponsoring the Great British Beach Clean for a third year and will be taking part in beach cleans across UK.

The program is one of the largest marine citizen science activities of its kind in the UK and the charity hopes that by gathering more vital data through its beach cleans, it can create change for cleaner and healthier seas.

Last year, a total of 4,684 plastic carrier bags were recorded across the UK and Channel Islands by Marine Conservation Society volunteers.

The charity hopes to see a reduction on beaches of items such as single-use plastic cutlery, balloon sticks, polystyrene cups and food containers following a ban in England last year, after and similar bans in Scotland in 2022 and Wales in 2023.

More than 100 beach cleans have already been organized to take place across the UK during the Great British Beach Clean, from Bude, Cornwall to Aikerness in the Orkney Islands.

Cullen Allen, founder of Cully and Sully Soup, said, “We are excited to be part of the UK’s biggest beach clean initiative for a third year. As a B Corp, doing good is at the core of what we do. We are always striving to do better internally as a business but we really enjoy when we get to encourage and join our customers in doing good We are looking forward to getting stuck in to the beach cleans again this year, serving up our soup to the SOUPer volunteers and taking direct action on marine litter.”