A Margate councillor hopes to publicise across London the appalling state Margate sands were left in once again yesterday in a bid to urge visitors to bag and bin their rubbish.
The bid follows several coach trips, including an annual gathering thought to be church organised as well as other groups, visiting the town yesterday (July 27) but thought to be responsible for leaving some of the enormous amount of discarded waste on the beach.
The mountains of rubbish, including bottles, disposable plates and cups,discarded wrappings,buckets and even broken tents, comes just two days after council workers had to clear a similar scene of litter. There was also evidence of black bin bags.
Cllr Gary Taylor (pictured below) is now attempting to get the message far and wide that visitors, as well as locals, need to clean up after themselves.
He said: “Margate certainly welcomes visitors, however there needs to be respect and responsibility for our wonderful beaches. With August around the corner we need coach companies to let their customers that leaving the beaches in that state is unacceptable.
“Hopefully a TV news report in specific areas of London and the wider area will highlight the issue of the past week of our beaches left in a disgrace.”
Last year Thanet council collected over 5 tonnes of litter from isle parks, streets and beaches, some 3.5 tonnes of that was just from beaches.
The street cleansing staff are contracted to work 7 days a week from 6am to 8pm in the Summer, Monday to Friday and 6am to 2.30pm Saturday and Sunday and yet still the mountains of waste fill our beaches, flow from overs-stuffed bins and spill into the streets.
There are more than 400 litter bins across the district and during the peak holidays there are an additional 180 bins in busy locations.
We have 19 miles of stunning coastline in #Thanet. Help us to keep it beautiful by placing litter in bins, taking home your leftovers and leaving our golden sands rubbish free #BeautyoftheBeach pic.twitter.com/LpgJR3QzDY
— VisitThanet (@VisitThanet) July 28, 2019
But suggestions have been made that more bins on the beach, or the handing out of ‘tough’ rubbish bags to visitors whether local or from further afield, could help alleviate the problem. Enforcing on the spot fines has also been raised.
Suggestions also include installing signs directing people to bin their trash and flyers that visiting coach companies could hand out to their passengers showing the terrible state the beach becomes if people are not responsible about their rubbish and having a recorded message on the beach urging people to bin litter.
Clean beaches are a priority for tourist destinations and Thanet welcomed a record 4.2 million visitors, worth a whopping £319 million to the local economy, in 2017.
The number of day trips to the Thanet district leapt by 9.9% in 2017, meanwhile the total number of nights stayed in the district increased by 4.9%.
The total number of jobs supported by tourism rose by 8.7% to 7,950, with the industry accounting for an impressive 19% of total employment across Thanet.
Thanet council has been asked for comment about whether it may hold beach event hire details for organisers and what action can be taken.
Council workers took on the mammoth clearance task this morning, leaving the beach pristine.
Two coach firms that brought visitors to Margate yesterday and one of the church organisations thought to have been among yesterday’s visitors have also been contacted for comment.
Read here: The horrendous mountains of rubbish left on Thanet beaches once the sun goes down
