There was plenty of high-performance ‘pick-up’ action at Southend-on-Sea Beach after a team from Nissan and the formidable Navara OFF-ROADER AT32 hit the sand to give it a litter-free makeover.
As part of the manufacturer’s Days for Change volunteering programme, the team of 20 employees spent Friday 10th August combing the popular beach for rubbish. With advice and some handy equipment from Southend Beach Care, the team set to and collected everything from bottle tops to wrappers and ice cream spoons to cigarette butts. Other items included cotton wool buds, socks and even shoes!
After a morning of litter picking the team collected over 20 full bags of rubbish, their efforts making a helpful contribution to the beach’s appearance and stopping the waste from harming any wildlife or causing further pollution.
The day follows the Navara OFF-ROADER AT32 having a starring role in helping to clean up Cornwall’s coastline earlier this summer. After Nissan heard of the Beach Guardian project established by Cornish dad and daughter team Emily and Rob Stevenson and the struggles they were having in reaching remote beaches and removing bulky waste, it volunteered the Navara OFF-ROADER AT32 to help.
Beach Guardian is the brainchild of Emily Stevenson (21), a marine biology student, and her father Rob (50). The pair have been clearing waste from beaches in Cornwall for 10 years. They decided to set up the community group after realising the plastic problem was getting worse. They amassed an army of local volunteers to help, but they were struggling to reach remote locations and remove bulky rubbish with their family car, so they posted a request for help on social media.
Nissan responded by volunteering the new Navara OFF-ROADER AT32, which can be fitted with a snorkel and is designed for the most extreme landscapes. It helped Beach Guardian take on their most challenging beach plastic clean-up to date, reaching over rocky terrain and removing debris like plastic nets that had been deeply embedded in the sand for more than two years.
More than eight million tonnes of plastic end up in the world’s oceans every year with devastating consequences for marine wildlife, fisheries and tourism. During its recent Great British Beach Clean Up, the Marine Conservation Society found 718 pieces of litter for every 100-metre stretch of UK beach surveyed.
With the aid of the extreme pickup, Emily, Rob and their team of volunteers were able to take on their most challenging beach plastic clean-up to date, reaching over rocky terrain and removing debris like plastic nets that had been deeply embedded in the sand for more than two years.
Additionally, Nissan is inviting community groups across Europe to nominate remote and tough-to-reach beaches or other locations where the Navara could help them clear plastic waste.
In the UK, members of the public or community groups who want to highlight an area of beach that needs clearing of plastic waste should use the free What3Words photo app to send an image of the beach plastic they’ve found along with its precise location to Nissan GB at [email protected]
What3Words is a unique global addressing platform that allocates every 3m x 3m location with a simple three-word address, e.g. ocean.plastic.waste. This address corresponds to a GPS location, thus allowing a specific spot on a beach to be identified and easily shared – even along the most rugged and remote coastlines.
