local thing

And the nice people at hamble.net have gotten behind us too.....

thank you

what happens next

Just a short post today - it was a gorgeous morning, but the tide was out exposing what has happened to the truckload of tyres that were fly-tipped a couple of weeks ago......there is no 'away' when we throw our junk away. Very sad to see. There are more pictures here. And a quick happy birthday to my lovely mum too.

numbers schmubers

Initially I thought that because our green recycling bin has more in it each week than our rubbish bin, we must be doing something right, but thinking about it further it is still worrying that two adults and a dog can more or less fill three big wheelie-bins every two weeks. That's an awful lot of waste - in the truest sense of the word. Now I've never been a big fan of statistics, partly because I have always had severe mathsaphobia and a general distrust of numbers in general, but mainly because I used to bend and twist statistics for a living. It was mainly honourable and on behalf of good organisations but when you work in public relations, you learn that stats are never bad. You just spin them to suit your own argument. Some stats are pretty compelling - see the previous post - and there's no way to spin the obscenity of our consumption. Here are some more figures from Waste Online that may be guesstimates, but should still give us all pause for thought.

The UK produces more than 434 million tonnes of waste every year. This rate of rubbish generation would fill the Albert Hall in London in less than 2 hours.

Every year UK households throw away the equivalent of 3 ½ million double-decker buses (almost 30 million tonnes), a queue of which would stretch from London to Sydney(Australia) and back.

On average, each person in the UK, throws away seven times their body weight (about 500kg) in rubbish every year.

Glass

On average, every family in the UK consumes around 330 glass bottles and jars a year. (British Glass)

It is not known how long glass takes to break down but it is so long that glass made in the Middle East over 3000 years ago can still be found today.

Recycling two bottles saves enough energy to boil water for five cups of tea.

Fantastic plastic

Every year, an estimated 17½ billion plastic bags are given away by supermarkets. This is equivalent to over 290 bags for every person in the UK. 17½ billion seconds ago it was the year 1449.

We produce and use 20 times more plastic today than we did 50 years ago!

waste online

running the numbers

Every now and then you come across something on the web that brings you up sharp. Having had a good long stroll on the beach - still cut with unwelcome detritus - the dog and I hit the net to trawl for new music, and as is the way of such things, came across Chris Jordan's site via the ever marvelous Radiohead links page. Not only is Jordan's photographic art arresting and beautiful it's also utterly appalling at the same time. He is a political artist who makes huge montages of waste to make a compelling statement. It's easier to just direct you to his site than to explain but in a nutshell he counts the terrifying amounts of US consumption and makes those numbers shout in art..... apparently in the Sates over 426,000 cell phones are 'retired' every day. 410,000 disposable hot-beverage paper cups are used every fifteen minutes. 60,000 plastic bags are used every five seconds. And one million plastic cups, the number used on airline flights in the US every six hours.... doing the sums is truly incomprehensible but he has made them understandable. Although the levels of thoughtless consumption are scary in the US, we're not far behind and it's no wonder that there's so much crap on the beach.

Depicts 106,000 aluminum cans, the number used in the US every thirty seconds.

closer-in

...make sense now?

Depicts two million plastic beverage bottles, the number used in the US every five minutes.

http://www.chrisjordan.com/

rolling on

The campaign is rolling on - gathering no moss - but getting the support of local businesses who don't seem to think that we're entirely loopy. Carole from the Hamble centre of gastronomic excellence that is the Bonne Bouche deli will be providing FREE tea, coffee and cake for our beach cleaners pre-kick off, and Janet from the King & Queen will be laying on a BBQ afterwards.

www.bonne-bouche.co.uk & www.kandq.co.uk

the man from the council say YES

I'm happy to report that there's a very nice man at Eastleigh Council's 'Direct Services Team' (no idea what stakeholder-service-solutions they provision?), said a lot of yeses to my questions which was as surprising as it was pleasant to hear. Yes you can have our permission to do the clean-up (we'd have done it anyway). Yes we can provide you with the right bin bags. Yes we can provide you with litter pickers (tong-like tools not people). Yes we'll arrange to take the rubbish you've collected away. And yes we are responsible for the beach, and yes, sadly we know it's a problem area that we do clean up from time to time so yes, it saddens us that the litter piles up at express speed again too. Having gotten pretty much a full house of yeses to my questions, I didn't feel the need to press him on what more the council could do and who was ultimately responsible. I know that he is a civil servant, not responsible for policy and decisions so that bit of lobbying will wait for another day and another man. Who will doubtless say no.

As a footnote, I would say that it was a salutary lesson in what a positive manner could do. It had taken several attempts to get him on the phone and his tone of voice when he answered this time was tinged with .....'uh oh, hear we go - a moaner'. I opened my conversation with "don't worry I'm not calling to have a go.....just want to do a clean up..." and was all chirpy, happy, friendly; and he responded in kind. Send out the positive voodoo and it comes back. Even from the council. Lovely day too this morning.

lovely sunday evening

nuff said...

poison

It was gorgeous on the beach this morning - Southampton Water was mill pond flat and the gulls and terns were pottering along the waterline with a jaunty, spring-like air. But there is more and more crap appearing daily. Lots of discarded fishing related packaging and bait wrappers; tonnes of Friday night beer cans and bottles and this. Good thing I found it before the dog did. the bathtub has also found it's way back to the waterline and was starting to bob its way seawards. Lucy and I rescued it and put it on the footpath in the park. Hopefully the binmen will take it away properly - and I now use 'away' advisedly - see earlier posts

going live!

Smashing development to wake up too - the site www.ilovemybeach.org is now live! merci beaucoup C&A. (go on, off you go to utopia to get your iphone ap www.taleetalee.com)

Things are starting to happen and the dog is itching and whining to get down to the beach and inspect the day's litter content.

not just surfers & utopia

Up early and off for sunrise walk on the beach with the hound and feel re-energised after a really good chat yesterday afternoon with Andy - head campaign guy at Surfers Against Sewage. Always good to get advice from the experts and he is very kindly going to throw the weight of SAS behind our little campaign. They have their own Love Your Beach campaign and we're going to hook up with that, rather than MCS, mainly because they don't require us to fill in tonnes of paper and because they have consistently and successfully walked the talk for many years. They're proud of their roots as a bunch of hairy surfers making some noise until something gets done, but they're now much more than that and are do-ers. Which we like. www.sas.org.uk

We also like the do-ers at Utopia. Chris has rustled up a lovely website under Andy's patient tutelage despite them both being horrendously busy with other, paying gigs, and it should go live in a few days......more here soon. www.utopia365.com thank you to the chaps who live in utopia

Dog is now whining and demanding that we go stroll.....so we will.

Lucy's Musings

I just wanted to air a few of my thoughts on our project so far and give more of an indication of where I hope we're going with it.

I am not interested in going after the bad guys, or counting litter for a survey, or telling people off for littering, or create unnecessary paperwork.

I just want a clean beach.

The MCS do a lovely job of producing qualitative and quantitive reports, the good beach guide, surveys, impact on marine life etc...

SAS do a great job of lobbying government for cleaner waters, raising awareness and educating water users of sewage problems.

But nobody seems to take responsibility for just getting the job done. Y'know, getting your hands dirty and picking up the crap.

They rely on volunteers to do this and overwhelm them (and indeed us) with paperwork...loads of it! It's enough to put anyone off - particularly a volunteer who just wants to spend a little time doing something good for their community. The council's aren't going to do it - if you ring them and ask who is responsible, they genuinely don't have a clue.

But it's no-one's fault. They're all bogged down with other things to do. Which is why we want to do it. We want to take responsibility, we want to clean it up and make it fun. We'll do the paperwork and the organising, you just need to don your marigold's and join us on the beach!

This has inspired me and may inspire you too... www.dolectures.com

it's all his fault

This lovable ASBO of a hound is responsible for this campaign. He cut his paw on some broken glass whilst innocently gambolling down the beach and, being a labrador, likes to eat a lot of deeply unpleasant things - most of which have no business being on the beach either. The digested results can be imagined but they aren't easy to clean up either.

bumpf and jargon

It was a gorgeous sunset last night and the hound and I had a gorgeous walk on the beach, keeping our eyes west towards the sea; studiously ignoring the ever increasing levels of s*** on the tide line. We felt we could do this as we are organising a clean-up in a few weeks time so we have earned the right, in advance, to imagine what the beach will look like after we're done.

The sad news is that the Marine Conservation Society's adopt-a-beach/clean-a-beach organiser's pack arrived and it's a chunky folder of doom, inches thick. There seem to be reams of complex surveying to be done - example: "how many cotton buds/bottles/cans are there on the beach, and please put accurate numbers not just 'lots'?" - sorry but the answer is, in fact, loads. The beach is a mile long and it is literally covered in crap. We don't want to count it, examine it and seek out its provenance, we just want to clear it up.

But worse than the survey is the 'risk assessment' - without a doubt THE single biggest curse of modern Britain. There is no risk. If you are unfortunate enough to somehow injure yourself whilst clearing up a beach then it's your fault. No-one else's and you don't have the right to collect money from anyone. I shall go no further this time, except to say that the whole folder has put us off doing our clean up with the MCS - surely not their fault, but the huge amount of paperwork just made us depressed. We want to clean up the beach not get involved in civil-service double speak and risk assessments. bleaugh. So I was very happy to read this morning that the Local Government Association has banned a huge chunk of spurious language that I hate - blue-sky thinking etc. Sadly it doesn't look like they've banned risk assessments yet. *sigh* http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7948894.stm

sofa

I bet that some one thought it would be a great idea to have a picnic on the beach and then thought - yeah, let's take the couch to chill out on. Bet they couldn't be bothered to take it away again afterwards. Doubt very much that the tide brought it here. Looks like we'll have to get a truck to help with the clean-up

there is no away

My friend Angus who runs a botanical recycling company always says that people think of him/binmen as the waste fairies - 'we just magically make their rubbish go away'. My brother came up with another gem of, possibly borrowed, wisdom...."there is no away" - as in 'just throw it away'. Indeed. The poor beach is testament to that. The idea that the sea will consume and devour our rubbish is in fact rubbish. The last few days have been blissfully bright and clear and sunny and it has thrown the problem into sharp relief. Whilst a lot of the muck has come from passing boats, too much of it has been obviously discarded by people using the beach on the first warm sunny weekend of the year. The amount of detritus on the tideline has reached epic and disturbing proportions. I promised not to preach but really....there is no away unless it's in the bin. And even then it's got a long way to go before a proper away.

hooray.....oh boo

Hooray the council have been to clear up the tyres!.........oh but hang on......

Oh booo....... looks like they couldn't be bothered to walk 25 yards to get the rest of them. Why am I not very surprised?
I don't know what makes me angrier, the eejet that tipped them or the eejets that only did half the job. I'm guessing here, but I bet it is some by-law....'the cliff and grassland behind is the council's responsibility but the beach is not....' Or it could be that 'we did a risk assessment and our we couldn't expose our operatives to the dangers of sand and shingle'. I'll contact the council and report the real excuse here. Lord help us.

Lucy, in her position as calm, wise one, has pointed out that they probaly came at high tide.......hmmm......probably right, but I'm still grumpy about it.

No action

So, unsurprisingly, there's been no action from the council on the tyres, which 6 or 7 tides later are making their slow inevitable progress down the beach. Going to log another call to the crack fly-tipping unit in the hope that someone might get off their butts and clear it up. I met an old fella walking his dog and the look on his face summed it all up - genuine disbelief and genuine sadness. His old dog looked at the tyres and looked at me with a 'well you humans never surprise me'. The dog wore the same expression of sad resignation as his owner.

So our plans are rolling into higher gear, in the form of 'to do' lists, and we're starting to pull together all that we need for a kick-ass website and a bit of a local media blitzkrieg......the editor of the parish magazine won't know what has hit him/her?

new flickr pics

despite all the muck and she eyte - this unremarkable beach can still put on a magical show. sadly, no one had cleaned up the tyres
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ilovemybeach/

just beyond belief

clearly they didn't fall off a boat! I'm off to the beach now to see if the council's crack fly-tipping swat team have swung into action.....not holding my breath.

distressing news

Lucy took the dog for a walk this morning and to her horror discovered that some mindless idiot had dumped a truck load of tyres on to the beach. Tyres are so easy to re-cycle and create a valuable re-useable product. So the question - as always - is why? whywhywhywhywhy?

King Canute's Throne

Sadly the king was never found after his unsuccessful attempt to command the tide. And no one from the council cleared up the mess. But is it really their job? Maybe the silly king should have taken his chair with him.

It was there yesterday. Gone today. Probably swept off to someone else's beach. How sad

there are no stakeholders

Lucy has made me tone down my post, and it was a bit of a rant. What got my goat is the frequent reference to 'stakeholders' in so much of the guff about beach management (another term that makes me wince) that's out there. I know it is a useful catch-all phrase but it is so often used by governments and councils and quangos to mean the people who really should be consulted in detail, but who will actually be ignored and excluded. So in our little campaign there will be no stakeholders. To be an eco-hippy for a minute, if you want to be involved, then we all have a stake in the state of the beach - managed or not - and it's all of our responsibility.

And if I'm coming on all political, I might as well state a manifesto which we will, unlike most politicians, genuinely attempt to honour.

There will be no blue-sky thinking here. No committees or steering groups. No one will drill-down. No one will data-mine, crunch-numbers, run anything up a flagpole and all thinking will be inside of the box. There will not be a target market and nothing will be aimed at key demographics. It will just be a bunch of people who care and are prepared to do a little something about it. So there.

What's the point of a blog if you can't rant a bit.

still not pretty

found a tiny plastic flower on the beach this morning. looked magic. but it was still trash:(

Tommy Reilly

apropos of nothing.....I've become a huge fan of Tommy Reilly - no not the old harmonica dude, but a young scottish singer/songwriter who should be hew-owge.

He won the orange unsigned act TV show, which is a kind of idol-for-indie-songwriters type programme on channel four. He's a genuine talent and his song 'give me a call' is

catchier than ebola http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zCpPqF4BnU

but what stole it for him was his cover of the killers' Mr Brightside....... special

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BecAdYGGLC0&feature=related

e

I wish I lived in utopia

it's always exciting when things start to happen and friends and colleagues start to pick up the baton. lovely to see your ideas enhanced and improved. We're very excited because the smashing chaps at utopia have come up with a few design ideas and true to form have taken my dodgy design brief and given us something special.....more here soon, but in the meantime if you need top quality web design, graphic design and iphone applications - plus a whole load of great stuff to do with compueryinterweb stuff I don't pretend to understand then contact Chris & Andy

http://www.utopia365.com/

A little light googling reveals that there are people keeping an eye on our beaches, but it's a bit of a King Canute job. We love surfers against sewage, but they specialise in water and have their hands full with their local beach....but they are worth supporting
http://www.sas.org.uk/campaign/marine_litter/index.php
The maritime conservation society are also in on the act - once a year.
http://www.adoptabeach.org.uk/

crisp bright and gorgeous

It's a bright, frosty invigorating day and the beach was, superficially, looking its best.  Southampton water was flat as a mill pond, only gently rippled by the ferries' wash, and the dog and I were pricked by the chilly beauty of it all. Big Mama nature was in charge, overwhelming the horrible human industrial footprints of Fawley & Calshot, with crunchy frost clinging to the shingle and thin layers of translucent ice in the standing water.  Gorgeous. Until we saw the bath. A whole, slightly used, bathtub sitting at an apologetic angle like a beached porpoise waiting for the next high tide.  Who? How? WTF? Why has some enemy of humanity dumped a bathtub in the sea?  It's probably the strongest sign  I've had that something must be done.  

We're going to spread the word, and if anyone in the Hamble or Netley feels like joining me in taking a little responsibility, do let me know at dirtmeetsthewater@googlemail.com

The beach in question is here....

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=so31+4nb&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=51.708931,78.222656&ie=UTF8&ll=50.867024,-1.339045&spn=0.040627,0.076389&t=h&z=14

i love my beach

Harly the dog cut his paw on some broken glass on the beach the other day and it made us very angry. I know that it's not the most lovely beach in the world - shingle and weed on one side and power stations and oil refineries on the opposite shore - but it's our connection to the natural world and it's always fresh, invigorating and life-enhancing....even when it's snowing.

So why is everyone treating it as a dumping ground? There's every type of crap on the beach from the usual plastic bottles and cans to a duvet cover and even a frickin bath tub. We're fed up and we're gonna do something about it.

Got lots of ideas and plans......More soon