Unwanted bodyboards put to good use by chairity
4 October 2019, 11:29
A charity is using unwanted bodyboards to provide new homes for bees
Over the summer, 480 snapped plastic bodyboards were recovered from two south-west beaches by environmental charity Keep Britain Tidy’s ‘BeachCare’ programme.
The boards, collected from Watergate Bay in Cornwall and Croyde Bay in Devon, were found littered on beaches, dumped in sand dunes or left abandoned beside rubbish bins.
We are thrilled to be contributing to this brilliant cause. Thank you @BeachCareSW and @KeepBritainTidy
— quince honey farm (@quincehoneyfarm) October 4, 2019
for getting us involved. #lovedevon #education pic.twitter.com/UorkUE8d39
Neil Hembrow, from the environmental charity, Keep Britain Tidy, said: “Every summer a deluge of these boards hit our shores. They are created from cheap materials that are only two inches thick and they don’t last five minutes in our powerful Atlantic waves."
He said the charity finds "hundreds of boards" on the beaches they clean, adding "there are thousands more dumped every summer. It’s an incredible amount of waste”.
The charity said the bodyboards are also "very difficult" to recycle due to the materials they are constructed of.
The polystyrene from the recovered broken bodyboards is now being used to form a protective insulating housing around the beehives at Quince Honey Farm, based in South Molton, to protect the bees during winter, when thousands usually perish trying to keep the hive warm.
Ian Wallace from Quince honey farm says: “We are thrilled to be able to provide a solution for this waste. We require polystyrene for building and insulating our hives so we’re really happy to take the boards from the beaches and make good use of them. Tourism plays a huge part in our business so we want to keep our beaches pristine to attract even more visitors”.
Watch the whole story in the video at the top of the page.
