By Katy Pearson

WHEN you think of taking a trip to the beach, what's on your mind? An ice cream? Sand castles?

For more than 70 people on Chalkwell's sands, it was rubbish.

The group spent the morning cleaning Chalkwell beach, as part a regular tidy-up operation.

Volunteers with Southend Beachcare and Green Action cleared litter from the Crowstone to Chalkwell beach, the Cinder Path and the Cinder Path foreshore – collecting 40 bags of rubbish in total.

Some 85 plastic bottles were picked up with – along with lots of tin cans and glass bottles cleared from the shrubbery around the beach, just before Easter.

Beachcare Southend’s Win O’Sullivan said: “As a coastal community we need to clean up our act, not only on the beaches but on the streets.

“Many people, they think that beach cleaning is just clearing up after people on the beaches, this is not the case. The littering in our communities is having a huge impact in our precious marine environment.

“There is so much beach cleaning going on. When I first started three years ago, we would get 15 people attending - now it is more than 70.”

Meanwhile, Surfers Against Sewage got to work in Thorpe Bay at Southchurch Beach – by Billy Hundreds and the Ocean Beach, last week.

More than 20 volunteers collected five bags of rubbish and a bag of recycling, along with 15 bottles.

Friends of Concord Beach clean one and a half miles of Canvey’s seafront, from the Point to the start of Thorney Bay, at least once a week – and have been doing so since 2010.

Chairman, Colin Letchford said: “Every Sunday our volunteers collect at least six bags of litter. “Some volunteers clean during the weekdays. We work closely with the Pinnacle cleaners employed by the Council. In the summer when the beach is full of visitors, we will litter pick several times a day. Some groups will come along and help with a bigger clean-up, but we do not rely on that.

“The biggest misconception is that it is the Council's responsibility to keep the seafront clean. It is not, it is everyone's responsibility not to leave litter.”

TODAY the Echo launches its Keep Our Beaches Clean campaign.

As the weather warms up, most of us will be looking forward to making a trip – or two – to the seaside.

We have no shortage of lovely beaches here in south Essex. From Thorney Bay and Concord Beach on Canvey, to Chalkwell beach, Old Leigh, Southend’s lagoon and the blue-flagged Thorpe Bay beach, our stretch of estuary is something to be proud of.

When the sun shines, thousands of children enjoy running along the sands and splashing in the sea. Families take picnics and spades. Suncream and plenty of bottles of water. It’s a cliché, but it’s true to say that memories made at the beach last a lifetime.

But our shores don’t stay clean by chance. And if we are going to continue to enjoy our seaside days, we all need to do our bit.

In 2017, the rubbish washing up on the UK’s beaches continued to increase, up by 10 per cent on the previous year, says the Marine Conservation Society.

About 12million tonnes of plastic litter enters the oceans every year, killing millions of marine animals. And an average of 1,092 pieces of rubbish is found every 100 metres on UK beaches, in the south-east.

Here in Essex, there are already dozens of volunteers working hard behind the scenes, picking up litter left behind, or washed up by the tide.
But if we want to continue to enjoy our beaches this summertime, then it’s up to all of us to help keep them clean.

And the Echo is behind every effort being made by residents to save our seasides from sewage, from rubbish, from thoughtless litterbugs.

We want to back your beach clean-ups, to support your shore-saving missions.

To shout about the café’s ditching plastic straws or bistros offering bottle refill stations (some 20 per cent of beach rubbish is packaging from “on the go” food and drink, such as cups, bottles, cutlery, stirrers and sandwich packets).

This summer, let’s see our seasides shine like never before. 

Help Keep Our Beaches Clean.