If you’re thinking about joining us on a beach clean but don’t quite know what to expect, we’ve got you! We’ve put together all you need to know to be ready and prepared for getting outside and stuck in with keeping our coastlines clean. 

Where are our beach cleans held? 

We run our beach cleans across the Solent region. Our regular beach clean areas include:

• Warsash
• Emsworth
• Hayling Island Ferry Boat
• Eastney
• Hayling Island Billy Trail
• Hill Head
• Southampton
• Port Solent
• Cams Hill
• Selsey Bill
• Bracklesham Bay
• Prinsted

Information on where to meet and at what time can be found here. We recommend using the What3Words reference to find the exact meeting point. If you know of any other beach local to the Solent that is looking worse for wear and could use our help, please get in touch! We’d love to hear from you. 

Timings: Our beach cleans run for two hours at a time. We don’t expect everyone to be beach cleaning for two full hours and attendees are encouraged to take breaks or finish early if needed. However, if you are thinking of attending a beach clean, we ask that you do your best to be there at the start time stated on the eventbrite listing (this will usually be at 10am or 2pm, depending on tide times). This is really important as we carry out a safety briefing at the start of each beach clean that we wouldn’t want you to miss! 

Safety Briefing: In order to keep everyone safe whilst litter picking, we carry out a briefing at the beginning of each clean. Along with the vital safety information around removing sharps and other potentially hazardous waste, and keeping safe around water, we share site-specific information. This can range from information about where you’ll find the most litter, to facts about the local flora and fauna and how to limit damage to wildlife whilst beach cleaning. It is imperative that everyone gets a safety briefing before they start, so if you are running late and miss it, please find a member of Final Straw Foundation staff. They will be happy to go through the information with you. 

What’s provided and what you’ll need to bring

We provide all the kit you’ll need for beach cleaning. This includes litter pickers, gloves, reusable bags, hand sanitiser, and scales to weigh how much rubbish you’ve removed. We also have plenty of children’s litter pickers and gloves. We have sieves and pots, for anyone who wants to focus on microplastics that have washed ashore, or for sandy beaches- although there aren’t many of those along the Solent! 

If you have your own litter pickers, gloves or bags you’d like to bring, you are more than welcome to use them. We do ask that any of your own kit is clearly labelled as yours to prevent it getting mixed up with ours and that any gloves have protective rubber palms to reduce risk of potential injury from sharps. 

It is really important to come prepared to a beach clean, this means wearing clothes that suit the weather and suitable footwear (closed-toe shoes only please!). Hats and sun cream in the summer and waterproofs with lots of layers in the winter are essential. We also recommend bringing some water in a reusable bottle as beach cleaning can be thirsty work! It may be preferable to bring your own hand sanitiser too. 

Cancelling a Beach Clean

As much as we love getting out on the beach in all weather, there are some times where this is, unfortunately, just not possible. We tend to cancel beach cleans if wind gusts are high due to safety concerns. Along with safety reasons, we’ve found that it’s just not effective trying to litter pick when winds are high- the rubbish tends to go flying out of people’s bags and volunteers end up chasing it down the beach!

We also cancel during times of other adverse weather, including snow and freezing temperatures, electrical storms, and exceptionally high temperatures. There may also be the rare occasion that we have to cancel due to staff absence. This hasn’t happened yet and we don’t expect it to affect any of our future beach cleans as we usually have multiple staff on standby for a beach clean. 

If we ever do have to cancel a beach clean, we will aim to let you know within 48 hours of the clean via the email address you used to sign up. If weather conditions have changed rapidly for the worse before the clean and we have to cancel within 48 hours, we will let you know as soon as possible. Any cancellations will also be posted on our Social Media, so we recommend that you keep an eye on those for updates if the weather isn’t looking great. 

We hope that this has covered all you need to know about attending one of our beach cleans. If there’s anything else you’d like to know, or if you’d like to suggest a beach clean location, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. See you out on the beach!