From body boards to dance-floor boards
30 September 2010
Keep Britain Tidy’s Beachcare Project has come up with an innovative way to recycle the hundreds of body boards left on Cornish beaches over the summer – they have become a new dance floor for a local theatre company!
A recent campaign by Beachcare highlighted the debris of broken body boards left on Cornish beaches. From May to August 95 volunteers carried out 25 beach cleans, contributing 311 hours of their own time and collecting 123 full bin bags of litter, plus over 350 body boards.
When local theatre company Why Dance heard about all the body boards that had been collected they contacted Beachcare, suggesting they could put the boards to good use. The 350 body boards are now under-floor cushioning for the main room in their new building.
Neil Hembrow, Beachcare project co-ordinator said: “Not only do our volunteers carry out clean-ups on their beaches, they also carry out litter surveys to gather information about the sources of litter. While the majority of litter comes in from the sea with fishing debris and plastic making up a sizeable proportion, unfortunately beach users are also contributors, with discarded body boards one of the problems.
“It is great that the body boards collected by our volunteers over summer have now been put to such a good use. They even arrived at the perfect time for Why Dance who were in the process of raising funds for a new floor.”
Why Dance is a professional company that specialises in issue-based workshops with youth groups and adults.
For more information about the Beachcare project click here.