Beachwatch 2023: What you found

An incredible 14,271 volunteers removed litter from their local beaches and submitted over 1,000 litter surveys to us throughout 2023.

Volunteers across the UK and Channel Islands cleared 17,208 kgs of litter and provided vital information on the state of our beaches.

Find out about what this vital litter data tells us and the actions we’re taking around the UK and Channel Islands to reduce the amount of harmful plastic and other litter items ending up on our beaches.

Thanks to over 3,200 volunteers, we saw a 19% increase in the number of litter surveys submitted from Scottish beaches, giving us more vital data to use as evidence for policy change.

In 2023, we saw a 17% increase in litter with 188 items found on average per 100m of beach surveyed.

Unfortunately, wet wipes are still a major problem in certain areas of Scotland, with over 15,000 wet wipes picked up in 2023. Although this is a 50% decrease from 2022, it still highlights the pressing need for the ban on plastic in single-use wet wipes to come into effect, as well as additional support to switch to reusables.

Although we'll have to wait and see if this downward trend continues in future years, this is a positive sign that the recent investment by Scottish Water and Scottish Government to  deliver preventative measures in ‘hot spot’ areas is starting to work, however, to fully achieve sewage-free beaches we still need more monitoring and improvements of Scotland's wastewater network.

It's clear that Scotland needs to transition from a throwaway society to one which reuses, repairs and refills instead. Hopefully the Circular Economy Bill, introduced by the Scottish Government in June 2023 and is currently working its way through the Scottish Parliament, will help reduce beach litter.

With plastic and polystyrene cups recorded on 58% of beaches, we hope to see legislation for a charge on cups, like the carrier bag charge, along with other supportive measures to move to more reusable options.

With the support of the Scottish Islands Federation, we saw a 112% increase in the number of surveys submitted from across the Scottish Islands. With fishing and aquaculture gear making up 49% of the litter recorded on Scottish Islands versus 9% of the litter on mainland Scotland, it’s clear that action is needed to identify the sources and causes of this type of litter impacting coastal communities.

In 2023 we saw a 7% increase in drinks-related litter in England compared to 2022, making up 10% of all litter found in England. In total we recorded 21,757 drinks related items on England’s beaches.

We hope the implementation of Deposit Return Schemes set to come in to force in 2025 will result in less of these items littering our environment. However, to truly protect our ocean, we need comprehensive Deposit Return Schemes that are compatible between each of the UK nations.

Sewage-related items make up 4% of all litter found on England’s beaches with over 8,700 items recorded in 2023.

79% of beaches surveyed had sewage-related items, such as wet wipes and sanitary products on them. These items get swept onto our shores when sewers overflow due to heavy rainfall or insufficient capacity in the sewage network. We’re working hard to stop from this happening. Prompted by our research, the UK Government began a public consultation in July 2023 to review the Storm Overflows Discharge Reduction Plan. As a result of this consultation, all storm overflows in England will now be incorporated into the Plan, including all coastal waters and estuaries. We hope that addressing sewage discharges will lead to fewer sewage-related items ending up on England’s beaches.

Improving sewage systems and infrastructure is essential for the protection and restoration of our ocean and environment as well as public health. However, it will require significant investment to fund the upgrades necessary to deliver sustainable water management. This investment needs to come from within the industry, with revenue spent to deliver the improvements needed.

Almost 80% of the litter found on the Channel Islands’ beaches was made from plastic and polystyrene, showing how widespread the plastic pollution problem is. The main source of litter was the general public, which accounted for 31% of litter found on beaches, and 25% was made up of fishing-related litter.

As with Northern Ireland, we’re currently unable to draw statistical conclusions from the data and are keen to get more volunteers from the Channel Islands involved in our beach cleans and litter surveys.

If you’d like to take part and contribute to our ever-growing dataset, please email [email protected].