Morning! First tweet crossing over from Instagram. I have caved and created a Twitter account for Beach Clean Cymru.

How I got here. A THREAD...

Having been an avid litter picker for as long as I can remember, lockdown in March saw me begin to dedicate a huge chunk of my (suddenly free) time towards cleaning my local beach.

Usually I’d walk down to the beach maybe once a week? Less in winter. But my one walk a day’s worth of government-mandated exercise meant I could suddenly visit every single day with my daughter.

So as Spring slowly emerged, we immersed ourselves in nature. We observed the plant life and the animal life on the nature trail and on the beach.

Swans, Canada geese, mallards, tufted ducks, coots, anemones, periwinkles, lichen, marsh orchids... the list goes on. The outdoors became my daughter’s classroom.

Aberddawan (Aberthaw) beach is not very well attended. The location, distance from the road and lack of close parking mean very few visitors there in general. Lockdown meant we were the only people there. I feel so grateful for this time.

Every day we would walk through the nature reserve towards the beach. We’d climb over the sea wall, onto the stones and head across the sand to paddle in the cold water in our wellies.

One day in March I remember being sat on the sea wall looking out across the water towards Somerset. I noticed something flapping out of the corner of my eye.

Upon further inspection, I saw that it was a plastic water bottle, barely recognisable. The water had torn it to shreds and it was jammed between two rocks, camouflaged against the grey.

I looked around some more and noticed many many more blending into the stony background. Suddenly I could see plastic everywhere, disguised by its surroundings.

So the next day I returned, armed with a bag. I began stuffing various bits of plastic into it and within less than five minutes managed to fill the entire thing. All within about 1sqm.

The more I turned stones over, the more I came across plastic. It was evident that winter storms and spring tides had crammed untold amounts of plastic literally into the stony beach.

From then on I brought a bag down to the beach every single day and began working away on the stones diligently. My mission was to remove all the plastic that had been wedged amongst them.

Each day I would choose a different section between the groynes and work away on it as much as I could. Then I’d lug a couple of bagloads of plastic home for sorting.

The more I cleaned, the more I came across weird things. It’s an inevitability of any sort of litterpicking. Here are two of the weirdest early on lockdown finds - a fully intact Cadbury’s Easter eggs (found weeks after Easter). And something slightly more dubious

One of the troubles with marine debris plastic is that you can’t tell what sort of plastic is and whether it’s recyclable. I hated putting this stuff in the general waste though.

So I started collecting various bits of plastic, mainly colourful hard shards, lighters, shotgun shells and other weird and wonderful things.

I had an idea that I wanted to make something with it. But didn’t quite know what. I did some experimenting...

And I finally made a piece of art on a canvas using bits of broken car indicator lights, brake lights and bike reflectors. Believe it or not, these are a daily find on Aberddawan beach despite not being near a road. Lord knows where the currents bring them in from.

This brings me up to the present day, where I continue to beach clean daily, as well as making art from some of the things I find. Here are two pieces finished recently.

My aims then -
1.Clean the beach.
2.Prevent as many pieces of plastic from going to landfill.
3.Raise awareness through social media and art.
4.Lobby to turn off the plastic pollution at source.

Final tweet to close this thread is to say that I welcome questions, suggestions and collaborations. Let’s connect. And if you’re over on Instagram, please follow me as thats where the photography lies. https://www.instagram.com/invites/contact/?i=1vpo96p7rbbjf&utm_content=gver0ze