The amount of litter found on UK beaches has fallen for the third year in a row, according to Marine Conservation Society (MCS, Ross-on-Wye / UK; www.mcsuk.org), but the bad news is that plastics waste remains the most common form of rubbish on the country’s shorelines.

As it announced the results of its latest “Great British Beach Clean” survey, the MCS said the average number of littered items recorded per 100 m of beach across the UK was 385, compared to averages of 425 in 2020 and 558 in 2019.

Encouragingly, numbers of single-use plastic bags on beaches continued to fall, said the MCS, from a high of 13 on average in 2013, to just three in 2021. Part of this decline has been attributed to the introduction in 2015 of levies on carrier bags, which now stand at GBP 0.10 (EUR 0.12) per bag.

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Meanwhile, the number of plastic cotton bud sticks found on beaches has slumped to an average of six per 100 m of beach – the lowest in the Great British Beach Clean’s 28-year history – down from 15 in 2020.

While this is positive news for the UK’s beaches, the MCS said more needs to be done to bring down the amount of litter – and particularly plastics litter – which ends up on the nation’s shores. Laura Foster, MCS’ head of Clean Seas, said, “The UK government’s current piecemeal approach to single-use plastics policy just won’t cut it anymore. While we’re seeing a downward trend in litter on beaches, we’re still seeing huge volumes of plastic washing up on our shores.”

“A shocking 75% of all the litter we collected from UK beaches this year was made of plastic or polystyrene, so it’s clear what we need to focus our attention on. Comprehensive and ambitious single-use plastics policies, which reduce the manufacture and sale of items, is the quickest way of phasing out plastic from our environment,” she added.

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Levels of PPE found this year were similar to 2020, when masks were made mandatory across the UK. Nearly a third (32%) of UK beaches cleaned were found to feature PPE litter, although masks ranked halfway (59) out of 121 for most common litter items.

Not unsurprisingly though, about 33% of the litter collected came from unresponsible disposing of by the general public, or litter that has been carried by waterways, and almost 11% came from leftovers of the fishing business.