Essex charity urges people to protect coast from plastic pollution
They say it's damaging to local wildlife
At the end of a hot summer's day, lots of beaches are strewn with rubbish - and that rubbish has a big impact.
According to Eunomia, 12 million tonnes of plastic end up in our oceans every year, resulting in the deaths of thousands of marine creatures.
Now, with Marine Week kicking off today, the Essex Wildlife Trust (EWLT) are encouraging people to clean up to protect the coast and help animals.
Lauren Cosson is from the trust: "We've got so many coastlines in Essex and some people might not realise what fantastic creatures we have living there.
"We've got things like sea grass and salt marsh which absorb carbon, and help us fight climate change.
"These are areas that we're really wanting to save and champion so we can protect them."
The Trust identifies plastic pollution to be one of the biggest threats to the Essex coast. According to Eunomia, 12 million tonnes of plastic end up in our oceans every year resulting in the deaths of thousands of marine creatures, and Lauren says it's no different in Essex: "There's 150 plastic bottles per mile of the UK coastline, so when you think that Essex has got a 350 mile coastline, that's just a staggering amount of rubbish in the sea from just one item."
It's important to take preventative, rather than remedial, steps to stop plastics and other rubbish from getting into our waters, because fixing the problem is almost impossible, EWLT argues: "The trouble is, once plastic does enter a marine environment, it's very hard to get it back because, as we know, water washes things away.
"It can come back on the tide, but really, the stuff that gets washed back up on our beaches is only a small amount of what's actually in our oceans...
"It's best to just try and avoid bringing plastics to the beach or not don't use them at all in the first place, so that we don't have the trouble of trying to recover them, which can be almost impossible - also by that point, the rubbish will already have damaged the wildlife, too."
If you are heading out for a day at the beach, Lauren advises taking as little single-use plastic as possible: "Use things like reusable bottles and containers instead and take everything home with you to be recycled or thrown away so that nothing is being left behind."
For more information on the Wildlife Trust's Marine Week, click here.