Clean Sweep

Saltburn's seafront has once again been given a facelift with local volunteers sweeping the beach clean. Looking after Saltburn's beach is a constant battle against whatever the tide throws up, as well as "normal" litter problems from beach users. The community has long been concerned about rubbish in certain areas of the town and local individuals and organisations frequently organise a 'Litter Picking' event to do something about it.

Despite blustery weather 18 volunteers picked 18 bags of rubbish off the beach on Saturday 13th May - and 11% of it was sewage related. "This is the usual percentage collected during our two-hour quarterly sweeps and most of it was sanitary items," said new co-ordinator Chris Terry. "Before Northumbrian Water built the sewage treatment works at Marske 11 years ago, conditions were dreadful. Now it is a lot better, but not perfect. This is one of the main reasons why we do the Beachwatch litter-pick - monitoring Northumbrian Water."
Previous weekends saw the Valley Garden's Spring Clean as well as a small group of volunteer Diamond Street residents doing a litter sweep of the cliff face. The litter on the cliff banks was mostly plastic debris - almost all of it the result of problems related to the methods of collection in line with the council's recycling policy.