Tidying beaches for the season

Published: 12:30 PM March 16, 2015 Updated: 6:48 PM November 7, 2020

Volunteers helped to pick up litter from the beach at Jacob's Ladder on Saturday. Ref shs 9062-11-15SH. Picture: Simon Horn - Credit: Archant

Holiday cottage staff teamed up with Keep Britain Tidy to do their bit for Sidmouth’s beaches ahead of the tourist season.

Around 40 volunteers picked up plastic bottles, cans and an oil drum, from Jacob’s Ladder over to the main beach, as far as Duke’s, on Saturday

Mazzard Farm’s Ruud Jansen Venneboer, who organised it with the Beach Care initiative, said: “It was a way of making sure that, when the tourism season starts, we have done our little bit.

“Plastic is the biggest concern – at least metal gradually breaks down.”

He said the volunteers were evenly split between adults and children and it was good to see the different ages working together.

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Ruud also picked up some Lego, which he said could be one of the millions of plastic pieces that have washed up on beaches since a container of Lego toys fell in the sea off Cornwall in 1997.

While they were there, they bumped into a representative of Sidmouth in Bloom’s Sidcombers group, who said they would pick up where the Beach Care volunteers left off, from 2.30pm to 4.40pm this Sunday.