I found this on the beach the other week.
So that's an insulin jab, insulin jab,
God know what that is.
I'm stopping beach cleaning today.
This is my last beach clean ever.
How come?
Because I've spent four years losing.
Let's have a look.
A wet wipe, a nightmare.
I only started cleaning beaches in 2014.
There was five trillion pieces of plastic in the ocean.
As I finish beach cleaning in 2019,
them numbers have increased to 15 trillion pieces of plastic in the ocean.
We are trying to mop up a flood
and the tap's still running.
And your instincts there wouldn't be to just get the mop out,
it would be to turn the tap off.
If I just pointed out stuff that come from the beach ...
Toy soldiers are always valued by beach cleaners.
A Lego brick.
This one is full of plastic bottles.
I would imagine.
Mainly single-use plastic bottles.
And my kids' swing which is a huge buoy.
And this was collected in an hour and a half
on North Beach,
Aberystwyth.
There's 1,731 cigarette butts in there.
This is another sort of reason for me stopping as well,
is I've spent far too many weekends away from my kids.
And my three ... you know, walking through Aberystwyth, they ...
They are not the only kids in the world to do it but
they will just stop and pick up a plastic bottle out of the gutter
and take it to a bin.
You do that, don't you Cal?
Would you buy one?
With me? Do you buy when you're not with me?
When you're with who?
All right, are we ready?
Come on, then.
We are off to Aberystwyth University,
so when we get there, there will be maybe 30-40 teenagers
from Shrewsbury.
And we'll be doing an urban litter pick
and then a beach clean.
To be honest it feels a little bit like a relief
to finish losing actually feels quite nice,
and to not let it all go because it's not a case of letting it all go,
it's a case of finding real environmental actions
that actually make an impact.
Hello.
You all right?
It's not that it's not worth it, it's not that it's not noble ...
You all right? Come in, come in.
You guys might not know this but you are generation plastic.
Can you hold up your bottle, please?
So this, guys, Coca-Cola
make 110 billion plastic bottles every year.
They take no responsibility for that.
In scale, charities are already ...
They are not on the back foot, they are not even in the ring,
to be honest with you, you know.
WWF, you know, you want to sponsor a panda
everything is going extinct.
Surfers Against Sewage plastic-free communities ...
It's just more plastic being made than ever.
But they are up against the impossible task
that's my point
and isn't it time that the third sector
sort of sat back and asked themselves
some really hard questions about, are we successful?
There you go. There's your plastic-free Aberystwyth.
She has a plastic cup, with a plastic lid
and a plastic straw.
Underneath the flag.
No, it means, to the people that are involved
and the people that support it,
it means a lot.
Because it means that they are doing their best.
But when you're talking about 1% of the population
and the other 99% are carrying on, like,
nothing has happened.
Do you know what that is?
Yes, it's a tampon applicator.
It actually is, yeah.
Picking it up isn't really the answer
this is to show you guys the problem.
What the answer to that problem is,
is the end of producing plastic
which is ultimately a fossil fuel.
if you want to do something which is super, super positive,
plant a tree.
For the environment that would be my number one thing to do.
Outside of going into a shop and opening
every single Coca-Cola bottle in there
and not buying any of them.
I would love to go back to beach cleaning in five years time,
knowing that the action that I'm taking,
the energy I'm putting into it,
and everybody else that comes out and volunteers,
is cleaning the sea.
But plastic production and the lack of recycling is so broken
that it's like trying to stop a tsunami with your hand up.
It's just not going to happen.