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World Oceans Day reminds us all of the actions we can take to help protect and conserve our oceans. It’s a chance for us to change behaviour, challenge others and celebrate one of our greatest natural assets.

We work with our partners including Marine Conservation Society, Keep Britain Tidy, Surfers Against Sewage, water companies, local authorities and others to raise awareness through #BinIt4Beaches campaigns. BinIt4Beaches focuses on the positive steps we can all take to protect beaches, bathing waters and wildlife. One of those steps is what we flush down the loo.

Plastic pollution comes in all shapes and sizes and from multiple sources, including our toilets. Sewage related debris – the term used for items such as wet wipes, plastic cotton bud sticks, tampon applicators, sanitary towels and nappies, is regularly found littering our beaches and waters because it’s been incorrectly flushed down the loo.

Last year, Marine Conservation Society reported that over 18,000 items of sewage related debris were collected from beaches during the Great British Beach Clean 2018. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The majority of items incorrectly flushed down the toilet are caught by filters at the waste water treatment plants; the recorded items found on the beach survey are those which are either too small for the filters, or are the result of a sewage overflow after heavy rain.

While the figures recorded by Marine Conservation Society during last year’s beach clean are slightly down on 2017 they are still shockingly high. The number of wet wipes alone littering beaches represents a 300% increase over the last decade.

Toilets are not bins, they are meant only for the 3Ps; pee, poo and paper. Flushing items such as wet wipes, sanitary products and cotton bud sticks isn’t disposing of them, it’s environmental littering.

Help us and together we can protect and restore our ocean. #BinIt4Beaches.

Happy World Oceans Day!

Wednesday 15 May marks the start of the bathing water season and more than 400 bathing waters in England will undergo regular testing between now and the end of September. Last year 97.9% of bathing waters met the minimum standard and of those, 388 achieved the highest standards of Excellent and Good.

There are four classifications of bathing waters; Excellent, Good, Sufficient or Poor.

We want to encourage everyone to check the water quality before swimming. At designated bathing waters, signs are put up by the local authority displaying current classifications as well as other useful information. Information is also available online on the Environment Agency’s Bathing Water Data Explorer website.

Surfers Against Sewage has relaunched their Safer Seas Service app for the start of the bathing season. The app provides subscribers with water quality information on the go. It uses open data from across the UK and water company updates to provide real-time water quality alerts for over 350 locations around the UK.

Thanks to continued investment and action from Defra, Environment Agency, water companies, local councils, communities and environmental organisations, the standards at our bathing waters remain high, however there’s always more we can do and everyone can play a part.

We support #BinIt4Beaches campaigns in raising awareness and encouraging positive actions that everyone can take to help maintain and improve the quality of our beaches and bathing waters.

So whether it’s taking steps to ensure leftover cooking fats and oils are scraped into the food waste recycling or bin, only flushing the 3Ps – pee, poo and paper, bagging and binning dog mess or ensuring you put all your litter in the bin, it’s a step in the right direction to protecting our beautiful English coastline and inland lakes.

Join in the conversation and find out how you can help by following #BinIt4Beaches on Twitter.

We are thrilled to announce that our two minute beach boards have been selected for the Tesco Bags for Help grant! This means we are one of three projects now in the running to receive between £1,000 – £4,000.

From May, Tesco customers will be able to vote for their favourite project at stores across Fylde (details below). If we get the most votes, which we are sure we will, this means we will be able to pay for eight more beach clean boards for the Fylde Coast, which means cleaner beaches!

Voting takes place from Wednesday 1st May to Sunday 30th June, so make sure you pick up your tokens at your local store and vote for us!

The participating stores across Fylde are:

• Blackpool Tesco Extra – FY4 4UJ
• Tesco Express Blackpool Whitegate –  FY3 9BZ
• Cleveleys Metro – FY5 1BS
• Tesco Express, Ansdell Road, Blackpool – FY1 6PU
• Tesco  Express, Lytham Road – FY1 6ET
• Tesco Express, St Annes – FY8 3BN
• Tesco Express, South Shore, Blackpool –  FY4 2JD
• Tesco Express, St David Road, Blackpool  – FY8 2JU
• Tesco Express, Central Drive Blackpool – FY1 5DY
• Tesco Express, Bispham, Blackpool – FY2 0AF
• Tesco Express, Marton, Blackpool – FY3 9JW
• Tesco Express, Fleetwood – FY7 7DZ
• Tesco Express, Poulton le Fylde – FY6 7EP
• Tesco Express, Lytham St Annes – FY8 5EW
• Tesco Express, Thornton Marsh – FY5 4AF
• Tesco Express, Blackpool Westcliff Drive – FY3 7DR
• Tesco Express, Martin Drive, Blackpool – FY4 3EU
• Tesco Express, Lytham St Anne Road –  FY8 1SE
• Tesco Express,Warton Lytham Road –  PR4 1AD

To find out the location of any of the above stores, please visit Tesco’s store locator.