BIG
HARBOUR
CLEAN-UP

On Saturday 18th & Sunday 19th May the team at Go Pladdle are organising The Big Harbour Clean Up to get everyone out cleaning up Poole Harbour and surrounding areas of Poole.

The idea is to divide the borough into zones, and invite groups and individuals to join up and pick a zone to clean within. Groups will be able to register online and choose an area they want to focus their cleaning on. Individuals will be able to see groups who have already registered within their chosen area and will have the option to contact and join them, or create their own group.

Over the weekend, the groups will cover their area of the harbour, gathering rubbish and depositing it at a central pick-up point for later collection. Dive teams will also be out cleaning the bottom of the harbour and those with watercraft will be encouraged to focus on the harder to reach areas of the coastline.

On land, groups will be covered by Surfers Against Sewage public liability insurance; those on or under the water will need to use their own individual or group’s insurance.

What happens to all the rubbish?

Before being responsibly recycled, the plan is that the rubbish will be incorporated in an art installation created by a local school to highlight the problem of littering and plastic pollution in Poole.

After the clean, groups will need to contact us, and we will arrange for collection of the rubbish. We would like to encourage people to share their photos and reflections of the event with us so we can celebrate their achievement and raise further awareness of plastic pollution.

The public’s awareness of plastic pollution has been massively heightened over the last few years. Thanks in part to David Attenborough’s Blue Planet series on BBC but mainly due to years of campaigning work by groups such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and Ocean Conservancy, the depth of pollution in our seas is now, quite rightly, high on the agenda.

Appalling images of snared and suffocated aquatic animals and drowned sea birds have distressed us all. We now have indisputable scientific evidence that plastics have entered the food chain, creating alarming long term health problems for all life, including humans.

Many of us have wondered what we can do to halt the noticeable increase in plastic pollution in our oceans and almost as many have questioned whether anything would make a difference. As an individual any efforts you make to cut down on single-use plastics, avoid plastic packaging and recycle wherever possible may seem like a  drop in the ocean (if you excuse the pun). But together we can make a difference, not just in reducing the amount of waste we generate but also in cleaning up the plastics already in our oceans.