Marine protection charity The Marine Conservation Society (MCS) has today (19 March) released its annual beach litter report, and revealed that the number of wet wipes found discarded on UK beaches has increased by over 50 per cent in the last year.

The report has been compiled following the annual Great British Beach Clean, a volunteer project organised by the MCS as part of their beach-cleaning programme.

It reveals that over the weekend of 19-22 September 2014, 5,349 volunteers collected 2,501 bags of litter from over 300 beaches, including a plastic hand, a piping gun nozzle, and, on one beach, nine pairs of shoes.

Report details

According to the ‘Great British Beach Clean’ report, there was a 6.4 per cent increase in beach litter between 2013 and 2014, with the largest increases in litter arisings occurring on South West beaches, which saw a rise of 89 per cent in litter density levels (the amount of litter per kilometre (km)) on the previous year, and on Welsh beaches, which saw litter density levels rise by 46 per cent.

Volunteers recorded a 10 per cent increase in litter density in England, while those in Scotland reported a decrease for the second year in a row, dropped by eight per cent between 2013 and 2014. (However, Scotland had fewer volunteers, a smaller distance and fewer beaches cleaned than in 2013.)

Those in Northern Ireland also reported a decrease in litter density, with volunteers collecting 55 bags of litter last year.

The Channel Islands had the lowest litter density in the UK, at 864.5 items/km, although litter density has increased by 19 per cent compared to the Great British Beach Clean in 2013.

Calls for English and Welsh marine litter strategies

MSC noted that it is significant that both Northern Ireland and Scotland have seen decreases in marine litter over the past few years, as these two nations now have in place national litter strategies (the ‘the Northern Ireland Marine Litter Strategy’ and ‘A Marine Litter Strategy for Scotland’) in a bid to reduce the amount of coastal waste.

It is therefore now calling for similar marine litter action plans for England and Wales. MCS Senior Pollution Policy Officer, Dr Sue Kinsey explains: “There has to be a three-pronged attack on marine litter led by new policies and action from government, new practices from industry and behaviour change from the public.”

It is envisaged that a UK National Marine Litter Action Plan will address the key sources of marine litter, which the MSC see as public, fishing, shipping and sewage-related debris. The charity says new measures that need to be taken to tackle the issue could include: a nationwide deposit scheme for plastic drinks bottles and aluminium drinks cans (such as that recommended by Eunomia earlier this week in its own litter report), and better disposal /recycling facilities for fishermen, both commercial and recreational.

Commonly-littered items

MSC highlighted that volunteers also reported a considerable increase in the amount of wet wipes discovered on UK beaches, with levels rising by around 50 per cent on 2013. This problem has reportedly been exacerbated by people flushing wipes down the toilet, rather than disposing of them in the bin.

MCS Beachwatch Officer Charlotte Coombes explained: “Our sewerage systems weren’t built to cope with wet wipes. When flushed they don’t disintegrate like toilet paper, and they typically contain plastic so once they reach the sea, they last for a very long time.

“They can cause blockages in our sewers, and then, everything else that has been flushed down the loo can either back up into people’s homes, or overflow into rivers and seas.”

Although wet wipes are being increasingly prominent on UK beaches, plastic items on the beach still remain the biggest problem. Coombes commented: “The latest results from our weekend-long Great British Beach Clean event. . . show that plastic pieces are once again the most frequently found items on UK beaches.

“Mostly these can’t be identified so will almost certainly have been in the marine environment for years, starting off as something much bigger and then slowly breaking down – the problem is they will never disappear completely and research is underway to look at the impact these microplastics could be having on the food chain.”

Paying a high cost

In June last year, two United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) reports were released announcing that waste plastics entering marine ecosystems costs $13 billion (£7.7 billion) in damage annually.

The figure comes from the UNEP Year Book 2014 and Valuing Plastic, a UNEP-supported report produced by Plastic Disclosure Project (PDP) and Trucost Business.

Both reports highlighted that a large amount of plastic waste enters the ocean due to littering, poorly managed landfills, tourist activities and fisheries.

However, increasing work is being taken to tackle marine litter, including initiatives such as the ‘The Healthy Seas – a Journey from Waste to Wear’, which sees ‘ghost’ fishing nets recycled into nylon, and The Ocean Cleanup, a clean-up project that can reportedly capture 95 per cent of plastic from the ocean (and sends it for recycling).

Find out more about the MCS’s ‘Great British Beach Clean’ report.