Beach cleaning is good for the morale and the environment. Many beaches around the world are on the way to becoming real recycling centers. Fighting this scourge would put some soul into balm.

Until now laying your towel on a beach has meant avoiding other groups of vacationers. Now it is also increasingly necessary to slalom between bags, bottles and other butts abandoned on the hot sand. Many tourist destinations suffer from this pollution, such as Bali, disfigured by a heap of rubbish washed up in its mangroves and on its coast. Marine biodiversity and its environment are obviously the first victims of this scourge.

If we do not measure exactly how the pollution that affects the beaches has changed in recent years, we know for sure that the production of plastic has drastically increased. If it is necessary to fight this pollution at the source by repairing the faulty system of sorting of waste worldwide, there is,it is certain, nothing more effective than to go to collect the garbage that pollutes beaches.

The gratifying feeling of feeling useful

It is crucial to combat these deposits of waste that end up in the oceans, the lungs of the planet without which humans cannot live. It is necessary to educate upstream and organize collections on the coasts to avoid that they turn into recycling centers.

According to Surfrider which campaigns to dry up pollution at its source, 80% of waste on the shores is made of plastic. the good news is that collecting abandoned litter on the seashore would have direct effects on our well-being. One member of the International Marine Litter Unit research collective, a psychology researcher conducted a study, published in 2016 on the subject. The psychology of an individual is directly linked to the state of his environment.

Cleaning a beach can have a beneficial effect on the human brain. It is striking to note that the psychology of an individual is directly linked to the state of his environment. Some witnesses appreciated the gratifying feeling of doing something useful without consideration, the simple pleasure of strolling by the sea and exercising.

Sports enthusiasts also give in to a new Swedish activity which is starting to spread to the rest of Europe and the United States: “plogging”, contraction of “plocka upp” (“pick up” in Swedish) and “jogging” which is to collect the waste during his run. There is no doubt that trying to clean up the coastline is “simply hedonistic. This volunteering is a virtuous cycle for humans and their environment.

Citizen initiatives that are multiplying

Sometimes however it takes a counterpart to awaken the conscience of the most skeptical. The backbone of green thinking is the idea of ​​revaluing waste by giving it a second artistic life or by finding it a market value.

Waste is More launched this summer the Tririder initiative in the seaside town of Carnon (Hérault): a small jeep walks the seaside, everyone can hail it for journeys of around one kilometer on the condition of picking up a few waste. Offering a service against an eco-citizen gesture, it works while being fun: in one month they collected 37 30-liter bins and traveled 1,342 kilometers.

In general citizen awareness is growing, initiatives are multiplying. In 2012, the Cancer League launched the “Tobacco-free spaces”. Today, nearly fifty French beaches, in Corsica, Saint-Malo or even in Nice, have banished cigarettes from their soil, since not content with containing a whole collection of carcinogens, a cigarette butt alone pollutes until to 500 liters of water. And it is among the most common waste found on the coast.

Another item used in the top ten of the most common waste found on beaches around the world is straw. Some association spearheading in the fight against its single use, regularly takes part in Surfrider’s ocean initiatives, such as the collections on the sand of La Ciotat (Bouches-du-Rhône).