Coastal crabby
You can take a free bag and use it to take your litter home.
This project has already reduced the quantity of coastal litter by 19%
Many of our bins on the coast often overflow, especially in the busy tourist season, despite some being emptied twice daily. It isn't practical or attractive to line our coastline with more bins, so we are asking our visitors to take one small step of responsibility, to use a litter bag and take their rubbish home.
The campaign started in 2021 to tackle the increasing litter problem on the beaches within the New Forest district.
Previous strategies of more bins and bin collections were not as successful at reducing our coastal litter but, in 2021 coastal litter was reduced by 19% and in 2022 by 17% through the provision of bags for visitors.
The New Forest is an area of outstanding natural beauty, and this extends to our beautiful beaches. Aside from the unsightly nature of litter, we know that it causes significant harm to coastal and sea creatures.
The public bins at our beach locations become very full, very quickly - on busy days, they are emptied twice per day but can still be found to be overflowing.
Many well-meaning visitors would leave their bags of rubbish at the side of the public bins for collection. The consequence of this was what is termed as "animal strikes". Foxes, seagulls and other creatures rip into the unprotected bags looking for food, leaving the harmful litter to disperse and cause harm.
We would love to reach the point where visitors take responsibility for everything that they bring with them, disposing of refuse at a residence. Taking litter further away from our natural spaces to where it is easier to contain, control and be transported away has proven to be a successful approach.
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