SPOTLIGHT: Who gives up their weekends to clear rubbish?  

Many of us would consider litter picking to involve a little light collecting of discarded crisp packets, drinks cans and coffee cups. 

But eight shopping trolleys, part of a car door, a handbag, toilet brush, dozens and dozens of cans, a plastic utensil holder, clothing, two useable toolboxes and a cycle wheel were among the items in nearly a tonne (800kg) of junk collected on a recent ‘litter pick’ by volunteers on the edge of Shinewater Park in Eastbourne.

I joined Bespoke Cycle Group and environmental clean-up group BHASS Explore who spent a Saturday afternoon clearing just a small section of wildlife corridor on the edge of Shinewater Park. The main photo is courtesy of BHASS Explore.

We met in Edward Road, which is on National Cycle Route 21, a 95-mile ride from Greenwich in south-east London to Eastbourne.  

Cycling charity Sustrans notes: “You’ll cycle through the lovely Shinewater Park” before arriving in the town. Ironically, a sign drawn by a child (above right) asks: ‘Please take your litter home with you’.

Members of the cycling group were motivated to carry out the litter pick after noticing piles of rubbish in bushes and brambles next to the cycle route.

Near the edge of the park, alongside the large, grey buildings of a health club and car dealerships, a strip of brambles and trees bordering a stream are strewn with sacks of rubbish. 

There are two shopping trolleys entwined in a drainage ditch, weighed down by weeds and mud while another is in the water by the footbridge, near rustling grasses on the bank. 

A volunteer painstakingly rocks one of the trolleys clear of the sludge (above) until it is eventually dragged out of the depths with a rope tied to the handle to help pull it clear. 

In the tangle of brambles and bushes where birds sing, there are sackfuls of discarded household items, with a liberal sprinkling of ever-present cans and ‘disposable’ coffee cups. 

It is difficult to conceive why people choose to leave items they do not want in a wildlife area rather than donate them to a charity shop, take them to the tip – or even put them in a rubbish bin. 

The organiser of the Edward Road pick is Felicity Goodson, a yoga teacher and one of the co-founders of Bespoke. 

The group has worked for 15 years to promote cycling in Eastbourne and push for safer routes for families to use, such as a seafront cycle path away from traffic.  

Before Covid lockdowns, she organised regular mass cycle rides along the seafront with more than 150 cyclists to highlight the need for routes segregated from traffic. 

She jokes: “The yoga keeps me flexible to get into strange positions to pick up litter!”  

But she is deadly serious about the clearance. “It is so important to maintain the beauty of the environment for when you are cycling. This is a wildlife corridor with lots of birds, and litter kills wildlife,” she said. 

Polish-born Ania Woodgate, who has lived in Eastbourne for 20 years, was with her son Daniel, 12 (above). She’s a keen cyclist and it is cycling past this stuff which motivates her. 

“I can’t stand this sea of rubbish. I can’t believe that people walking the Seven Sisters throw their coffee cups away or leave them in the bushes,” she said.  

It’s a similar problem in Poland – she believes it just depends on the mentality of individuals.  

Does Daniel choose to come too? He hesitated, then nodded: “It’s pretty gross,” he said. 

Cole Cornford (above), who works in transport planning, is a keen cyclist and member of Bespoke. He is scrambling through the bushes to reach rubbish lodged in drainage ditches. 

“This town does not have perfect cycle networks but we want to look after what we have. Community groups should be making sure they are safe and pleasant to use,” he said.  

He is concerned that when highways departments use cutting equipment for roadside vegetation, it shreds the litter into microplastics which then cannot be collected and enter the environment. 

However, he believes in doing whatever helps: “It’s a good feeling to do this. It’s very satisfying for me.” 

‘Warm Norm’ (above at Edward Road), who founded Beachy Head and Seven Sisters Extreme Plastic Removal (BHASS Explore) three years ago, joins the group to help haul the trolleys out and lug the sacks into a pile, ready for collection by Eastbourne Borough Council.  

Norman, 60, moved to Eastbourne just before the first lockdown. “Once I saw the coastline from Holywell going west, I was hooked. It is such a wild coast – but there’s so much plastic.” 

He and 250 volunteers have cleared a total of 35 tonnes of marine debris, plastic and piles of other rubbish, including dozens of single shoes, from under the cliffs and around the nearby coastline.

BHASS Explore volunteers are currently giving up their weekends to work on sections of the A259 near Friston Forest where large amounts of rubbish are caught in bushes by the road, much of it discarded by motorists. 

Norman explained what he first saw when he walked along the undercliff from Cow Gap steps, west of Holywell, to Beachy Head lighthouse during lockdown outings in 2020.  

Just past the lighthouse the land juts out due to previous cliff falls and a huge amount of rubbish had been caught there by the currents over decades. 

“There were tonnes of plastic bottles, food packaging, containers, polystyrene and foam from the 1970s. It was knee deep. As you went down through the layers, it got older and older,” he said. 

So Norman founded BHASS Explore. Through dogged persistence, he enlisted the help of the Maritime Voluntary Service to help winch bag upon bag of rubbish (above) off the rocks and take it to Sovereign Harbour to be collected by Eastbourne Borough Council, which took it to be incinerated. 

The operation had to be precisely timed to coincide with high tides, flat seas and calm conditions.  

“We didn’t do it to make the place look pretty – we did it for environmental reasons, for the potential harm it can cause,” he said. It took five boatloads to remove a total of ten tonnes of rubbish.  

He added: “I have always cleared up after festivals in my spare time. This is the first time I have ever tackled something as big – it has become a bit of an obsession. But it is really satisfying.”

Norman’s hashtag #greensockmovement, which he started on Instagram to link people who are committed to clearing up the environment, has featured in nearly 12,000 posts worldwide. Wearing green socks is optional!

You can donate to BHASS Explore here to help cover expenditure such as bus fares for volunteers to get around plus IT and website costs. If you would like to help in other ways, contact bhassexplore.gmail.com

Norman is intending to return to the Shinewater Park area with a band of volunteers to continue clearing drainage ditches which are silted up with rubbish – and three more of those shopping trolleys they didn’t manage to pull out last time. 

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