A Little Spring Cleaning

A group of volunteers stand in front of about 15 black bags of collected litter and some other larger items taken from the foreshore

We recently teamed up with members of the Medway Rowing Club to do our first foreshore litter pick at the southern end of The Esplanade. 

It was a particularly satisfying morning, and volunteers collected a wide variety of materials including several items of garden furniture, a satchel, a road sign, part of the old pier, and the corner of a leather sofa, as well as several black sacks filled with smaller plastic waste and other discarded items. 

Our next planned foreshore clean-up will be in October, after the spring tide. You may be wondering why there will be a spring tide in autumn, but spring tides occur at any time of the year. The name comes from the concept of the tide ‘springing forth’ and these tides occur twice in each lunar month, during a full moon and a new moon, when the Earth, the moon and the sun are in line with each other and the gravitational forces of the sun and moon cause the oceans to move more than usual. 

When spring tides occur ‒ especially after a supermoon – the threat of flooding increases and quantities of detritus and non-biodegradable matter tend to be deposited along the shore line, so a clean up after a spring tide can be very worthwhile indeed. 

Find out more about our Litter Picking activities.

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Litter Picking News

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    Our first volunteer session of the year saw a good number of volunteers turn out, dressed for the wintry weather. We were able to achieve some great results on a couple of our ongoing projects.

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