Litter training

The seminar room at the Maritime Museum filled up with people eager to help clean up the Thames foreshore. After a day of "the basics" we'll be spending a couple of hours a month helping with litter monitoring and site clearup through Thames21 groups.

Those basics included thinking about how litter (including "sewage-related items") might end up on the foreshore. Thanks to Victorian plumbing, or rather "combined sewers", every time it rains there's an overflow of raw sewage into the Thames. Not nice.

A big tunnel is being built, by Tideway (a funder of Thames21, at least till next year). There's been a lot of controversy in the media over this tunnel project costing £4.2bn or so, but work got underway in 2016. It will reduce "combined sewer" overflows to a maximum of four a year, and the recycled clean water, treated at Beckton, will be released into the Thames.

The Thames has a big catchment area - 16,000 sq km, with 38 tributaries, 16 towns/cities, 200 rowing clubs, and 60 active port facilities -

The grey bit on the right is central London

Litter hotspots come in two sorts - floating, where litter is washed up by the tide, and sinking, where it gets covered by mud at low-tide level. One monitoring project concerned wet wipes, which should NOT be flushed down the loo - they pollute the river. At rear right you can (just about) see the muddy things piled up in a tray; the central picture shows them washed off and laid out -

If you use wet wipes (and who doesn't), put them in the bin, not down the loo.

The big problem with plastic litter is that not only does it look like fish to birds (silvery, shiny), it also smells like something edible, once it's been lying around in the mud or water for a while - the chemicals change and the smell changes to something that the birds recognise as "food". Only it isn't.

Seven million tonnes of plastics are going into the oceans every year, and by 2025 this is set to increase to 70 million tonnes. Clearing up foreshores is "a drop in the ocean" - the main thrust is really to find out where the litter is coming from and stop it at source, and there are all sorts of strands to that, eg if manufacturers didn't print "flushable" on packets of wet wipes, or perhaps the availability of litter bins (regularly emptied). Why do they have to make cotton bud sticks out of plastic, why not paper? And don't get me started on all that styrofoam packaging...

Surveys by Thames21 found that 65% of litter was food related; next category was toiletries, at 19%. Three quarters of the litter was packaging; 20% was food wrappers, which break into small bit quite quickly (and get ingested by fish and birds), and 10% was drinks bottles.

Bottle counts have found that 47% of bottles are bottles for still water - some from as far away as Turkey and Fiji. The organisation is working with councils on the possibility of providing fresh water facilities (remember drinking fountains?) where people can refill their own water bottles.

After lunch, here we are, braving the wintery chill and ready to learn about safety on the foreshore (eg, don't work alone; wear gloves, and wash your hands afterwards; leave sharp items lie) -

before setting out some transects and quadrants -

and picking up all the plastic, etc, in sight -

I was intrigued by the change in the ground at different strand lines -  a smattering of coal high up -

 brick further down towards the water -

 and the many, horribly brown, animal bones near the water (just had to collect a few for the photo) -

An enjoyable and interesting day - though it was chilly inside and out! - with congenial people. I'm looking forward to actually doing some litter-picking. "Every little helps" - ??