Deal’s community green group, Deal With It, will host a beach clean on Sunday, as part of a nationwide campaign the Great British Beach Clean.

The Deal beach clean, which will start at 9am at Deal Pier, will be one of 17 happening in Kent and about 400 around the country.

The Marine Conservation Society (MCS), which set up the initiative, hopes to get a record number of people cleaning beaches around the UK during the weekend.

Campaigns manager Tom Bell hopes the result of the event will return many of Britain’s beaches to their “halcyon days of the 1950s and 1960s”, before the country became a “throwaway society, resulting in thousands of pieces of litter, including vast amounts of plastic, along every kilometre of the UK’s coastline”.

He said: “Our domestic habits over the past 50 years or so have resulted in dirty beaches. We throw more stuff away than ever.

“Plastic in the marine environment may take hundreds of years to break down and it washes up or is blown on to beaches in bits from micro pieces to larger chunks.

'We flush stuff down the loo we shouldn’t, and that ends up in our water ways and then our beaches.'- Campaign manager, Tom Bell

“We flush stuff down the loo we shouldn’t, and that ends up in our water ways and then our beaches.

“We want to see people turning out to clean up their favourite or local beach during our Great British Beach Clean weekend – please don’t turn your back on beaches.”

Deal beach warden Wendy Boorman said: “This Sunday’s beach clean is part of our regular work with the Marine Conservation Society, which tracks how rubbish is affecting our coastline.

“Every year rubbish, as well as being an unsightly eyesore on our beaches, kills and maims local marine wildlife.

“The only thing volunteers need to bring is their enthusiasm and perhaps suitable dress for our weather.”

Deal With It will supply pickers, gloves, sacks and the MCS logging sheets.

For further details call 01304 372673, visit www.dealwithit.org.uk or email info@
dealwithit.org.uk