12 hours ago
Beaches left with 'heartbreaking' amounts of litter after hottest day of the year
The UK's beaches were left covered with 'heartbreaking' levels of litter after thousands flocked to the seaside during the weekend heatwave.
The hottest day of the year so far of 33.2C was recorded on Saturday afternoon in Charlwood, Surrey, and those kind of temperatures brought huge numbers to the country's beaches.
Sadly, the sheer multitude of visitors brought the problem of littering, with many reports of rubbish strewn across the sands including broken bottles, discarded food, used nappies - and even a child's mattress.
One of the worst affected was Brighton beach in East Sussex, where thousands flocked over the weekend.
But one resident and litter picker, Sammie Alpin, 33, said she was left "heartbroken" by the rubbish left on the sea front on Saturday. She posted video and images on her @the_plastic_coast Instagram account showing the state of the beach.
They showed bins overflowing with rubbish on to the beach and seagulls picking their way through litter and plastic bags.
Plastic bottles, drinks cans, rubber dinghies, flip-flops and even an insulin pen were left abandoned along the pebbles.
"What are we teaching the kids of today?" asked Alpin, who makes art from beach litter, in her video, saying that she was left "heartbroken and overwhelmed" by the rubbish.
"I knew it would be bad today but it's still heartbreaking every time it happens," she said.
"Brighton and Hove have hundreds of bins along the seafront, people just can't be bothered to carry back their rubbish."
Her video received a number of comments from angry users, with one saying: "I used to think this was down to a lack of awareness, but it's not an excuse any more.
"It's a lazy, selfish act of entitlement. People who just assume someone else will sort it out."
Another said: "It's quite embarrassing actually, that this is how the British general public act when the sun comes out.
"Every summer it gets like this and every summer I question my choice to live in this city."
One user said the situation was similar at Bournemouth beach in Dorset.
They said: "Same here in Bournemouth... tourists in their thousands come to our beaches and leave a complete mess behind."
Pictures from Bournemouth showed rubbish all along the sea front and overflowing bins.
Tom Hayes, the MP for Bournemouth East, posted on X: "Absolutely shocking. We all need to take responsibility for our own litter, but that means there should be more bins — and more frequent collections — during busy summer months.
Absolutely shocking 😞 We all need to take responsibility for our own litter, but that means there should be more bins—and more frequent collections—during busy summer months. I've previously written to BCP Council about bins on the beach. It shouldn't be this hard to keep our…
— Tom Hayes MP (@TomHayesBmouth) June 22, 2025
"It shouldn't be this hard to keep our beautiful town clean!"
Retired Gill Nicholson, 70, said she saw used nappies, broken bottles, rubbish and even an abandoned cot mattress while walking her dog early in the morning near the beach in Scarborough, North Yorkshire.
While she said local street cleaners did a good job in cleaning the mess up by the following day, workers nonetheless "have their work cut out".
She told Yahoo News UK: "I feel so sorry for the street cleaners. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any enforcement of laws regarding littering throughout the UK.
"We live in a wonderful place and we need to protect it."
In Wales, visitors to Sandy Bay in Porthcawl on Friday were greeted with lots of litter across the beach, the Valley Times Facebook page reported.
On Saturday evening, RNLI Lifeguards Lincolnshire said they were "disappointed" at the litter left on Skegness beach that day, and posted images of the rubbish.
In Folkestone, Kent, Facebook user Kathie Peel posted images of litter in the water along the beach.
She said: "People who have visited sunny sands today and 'forgotten' to take their rubbish home with them should be ashamed! All along the beach rubbish and dirty nappies in the sea. Absolutely disgusting."
Andrea Butcher posted an image on Friday of a rug and other litter left on Formby beach near Liverpool, writing: Free carpet on the beach. I hope today's visitors enjoy sitting in the litter which was left by yesterday's visitors. Perhaps it'll highlight the need to take their rubbish home? Probably not."
In March, a report by the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) revealed that the amount of plastic rubbish found on UK beaches had increased by 9.5% from 2023 to 2024.
It said more than 15,000 volunteers picked up a combine three quarters of a million pieces of litter last year, an average of 170 items per 100m of beach surveyed.
It said the most common items were plastic fragments, followed by single-use plastic packaging such as crips packets and sandwich wrappers.
The MSC said plastic pollution "remains a huge problem for our marine environment".
Plastic items can take hundreds of years to break down and can choke marine animals, with contaminants making wildlife less resilient to the impacts of climate change.
The MSC said plastic in the ocean has a "devastating effect" on marine wildlife, as fish, seabirds, sea turtles and mammals can ingest or become entangled in plastic, which causes suffocation, starvation and drowning. It said plastic kills about one million seabirds every year.
