Spotted anything different on the Beach lately…
This summer we’re encouraging visitors enjoying the Dorset coast to be plastic savvy and reduce the amount of rubbish entering the sea and littering our beautiful beaches.
A set of installations designed to represent the impact our waste has on Dorset beaches have been installed in Weymouth Lyme Regis West Bay & Bournemouth.
Whether it’s discarded plastic, cigarette butts littering the sand or large amounts of take away litter; the end is all too predictable and bound to have an impact on our seas, beaches and ecosystems.
Don’t take our word for it, go see them for yourself – take a ‘selfie’, upload your photos using the #footprints and tell us what you will do or have done to help tackle the issues of beach litter and reducing single use plastics.
Or if you have any brilliant ideas…tell us what they are! It’s good to talk!
But it’s not all doom and gloom. Thanks to our brilliant supporters and communities around Dorset and along the coast doing 2-minute beach and litter picks and our beach clean care groups and volunteers, we’re able to tackle this problem from a local to countywide level.
So, if you ‘take only memories and leave only footprints’…you can be part of the solution.
The end of August saw the finale of our behaviour change campaign beach installations. It’s been a love hate reaction and after the first week, Weymouth’s installation was vandalised and the lid damaged.
We agreed with the artist, Jack Raisey, that to prevent similar damage, that the lids of the remaining boxes should be closed, and the graphics re positioned on top.
Sadly, two weeks ago, the Bournemouth installation was completely trashed, which prompted an early removal. But on a positive note, feedback from our partner organisations told us the installations had been great conversation starters. A full review and feedback will be available for the next update, but when we said ‘leave only footprints’…we meant it.