May 2026

Sir Damon and Lady Buffini, fellow trustee Sue Gutierrez and former trustee, Maria Hindmarsh joined a Beachwatch Clean organised by Marine Conservation Society on Worthing Beach.

After a briefing session from Marine Conservation staff, the trustees joined local volunteers and spent 90 minutes combing a 100m section of the pebble beach. At first sight, the stretch of beach appeared clean, but the teams collected an astounding 22kg of litter with items including discarded clothing, lolly sticks, pieces of rusty metal, plastic, wet wipes and engineered wood.

All the items were meticulously categorised and recorded by the volunteers as this allows Marine Conservation Society to monitor trends and campaign for policy change.

The trustees found the visit very educational as well as enjoying a sunny day at the seaside and their fish and chips in the beachfront café!

Marine Conservation Society’s nationwide Beachwatch coastal clean-up is the longest-running beach clean and marine litter survey in the UK. It empowers communities to become citizen scientists by cleaning and recording beach litter, with thousands of volunteers participating year-round. The litter data collected during year-round Beachwatch cleans (which includes the annual Great British Beach Clean campaign) feeds into the annual State of our Beaches report. This provides an in-depth breakdown of the types, amounts and sources of litter polluting our marine environment. This robust data enables Marine Conservation Society to campaign and lobby for policy recommendations.