One Home Forever | The P&Co Beach Clean

According to our partner charity Surfers Against Sewage, it's estimated that over 12 million tonnes of plastic gets dumped into our oceans every single year, killing countless marine creatures and birds who mistake this litter for food or get trapped in it. Instead of disappearing over time, this plastic breaks down into smaller pieces, eventually entering the ocean food chain and in some cases, ending up inside humans, with the risks of this to our health being pretty unknown at this point.
A massive 76% of the 8,300 million tonnes of plastic produced between the 1920s and 2015 became waste and back then, only 9% of this waste was recycled. Recycling since then has obviously increased, but it isn't enough to get rid of the problem.

Having heard these figures, we wanted to see how else we could help. If you have been following our sustainability journey, you will know that we recently partnered up with Surfers Against Sewage as part of our One Home Forever initiative, so we went straight to them for some ideas. A few years ago, SAS came up with the 'Million Mile Clean'- an annual action bringing together communities to pick up the trash that covers our coastlines, canal paths, bridleways and city streets.

This was something the whole team here at P&Co could get behind, so we signed up, collected our litter pickers & headed up North to Thurstaston beach to do our bit. Covering nearly 50 miles of sand between us, we collected a whopping 55.8kg of rubbish. We were shocked by some of the things we saw littered across what was otherwise a beautiful beach - from Coca Cola cans and chocolate bar wrappers, to wellies and old car parts. Not only was a great opportunity to tackle plastic pollution head on, but it was great to spend some time out of the office; together in the great outdoors.

If you'd like to lend a hand on an organised clean, or even set up your own, you can head to Surfers Against Sewage's 'Million Mile Clean' page and get involved.