FEATURE
SAUNTON BEACH BANS CHEAP POLYSTYRENE BODYBOARDS!
First UK beach to stop selling cheap polystyrene bodyboards.
Following on from Westward Ho! becoming the first village in the UK to ban the sale of cheap, polystyrene bodyboards, Plastic Free Torridge, Plastic Free North Devon and Keep Britain Tidy’s Ocean Recovery Project are today announcing a ban on selling cheap polystyrene bodyboards at Saunton Beach. Every independent retailer at Saunton Beach will not be selling cheap polystyrene bodyboards this coming summer.
Cheap polystyrene bodyboards have blighted coastlines across the world for decades. Annually, hundreds of thousands of low-cost body boards are discarded on beaches across the world. Keep Britain Tidy report that 16,000 cheap polystyrene bodyboards ended up discarded on UK beaches every year. These “sub £10” brightly coloured boards, known to break easily often after only one or two uses, are invariably discarded on UK beaches by angry parents who feel cheated. These 16,000 single use boards create a large amount of waste in the UK and create a huge carbon footprint. These boards, made from a block of standard polystyrene wrapped in brightly printed nylon cloth, are sourced from China, transported thousands of miles only to snap within minutes of use. Polystyrene is fragile and crumbles easily posing danger to sea and shore life alike as animals mistake these small white polystyrene balls for food. Once in the ocean, algae and small organisms grow on each ball adding weight causing the nuggets to sink and present itself as food to fish. The human health threat from polystyrene comes from one of its building blocks Styrene. In 2018, the World Health Organisation reclassified Styrene from a “possible carcinogen” to a “probable carcinogen” – a probable cause of cancer.
The campaign, started in October 2019, has attracted widespread support across northern Devon with both area MP’s along with District, Town and Parish Councils calling on local retailers to remove these items from sale. Over 97% of 1,600 local residents polled have called for a change to be made to stop the damage these boards are causing to our natural environment.
“Today, we can confirm a self-imposed ban on cheap polystyrene bodyboards at Saunton Beach”, confirmed Claire Moodie, CEO, Plastic Free North Devon. ‘’The beach retailers will not be selling this type of bodyboard this coming summer. With Westward Ho! and Saunton Beach introducing bans, we are calling on all beach towns and villages across the UK to do the same.’’
At Saunton Beach, the businesses have voluntarily decided not to sell this type of bodyboard. ‘’We have been working with Plastic Free North Devon since the inception of the community beach cleans’’ commented Lucie Tamlyn, Director - Saunton Beach Enterprises Ltd. ‘Seeing the amount of broken polystyrene bodyboards either discarded or washed up on the beach, we knew it was an issue that we had to do something about so we decided to stop selling them in 2019 once our stock had ran out.
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