Last week several members of the Marketing Communications and Product Design team from our Europe office travelled to Talacre Beach in North Wales to take part in a beach clean-up project. Organised by the Marine Conservation Society, this UK based charity works to fight for the future of our oceans.
Every September thousands of people take to the beach all over the UK to take part in the Great British Beach Clean. The Marine Conservation Society works across the UK coast to facilitate beach clean ups in an effort to fight climate change. Alongside this they also aim to create marine protected areas, to allow for a safer natural environment for rare or threatened marine animals. Findings and data from their beach cleans have gone a long way to influence UK pollution policies and have led to initiatives such as the charge for plastic bags in shops and bans on plastic stirrers and straws.
During the afternoon the team has worked to clean up the beach and collected a large variety of litter materials. In just a small 100m stretch of coast, the team has collected 10 bags weighing over 18kg which contained 482 items, with the biggest polluter found being plastic. Other materials collected included metal, paper, rubber, and sanitary and medical waste.
Marie Cangelosi from our Customer Service team was one of the Ellison team members who suggested and organised our involvement. She said:
“We had a wonderful afternoon at the Talacre Beach, North Wales clean-up project with the Marine Conservation Society. The location was stunning and spending time with work colleagues after working from home for such a long time was great.
We are lucky that Ellison offers its employees a CSR day (Corporate Social Responsibility or Corporate Citizenship). The idea of a CSR day is to encourage Ellison and its employees to be socially accountable and to be conscious about the kind of impact we are having on all aspects of society, including economic, social, and environmental.
When it came to organising this CSR day, volunteering for the Marine Conservation Society clean-up survey was of great interest to the team as we are all very sensitive about the issues of plastic polluting our environment and recycling.”
This day was supported by the Ellison Corporate Social Responsibility initiative which was introduced in May 2021. This allows members of the Ellison team to take one day off per year to volunteer or support charitable causes. This initiative is part of the new Ellison people strategy which has put wellbeing as a main aspect to support.
