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Barefoot Wine Beach Rescue Project

Keeping Beaches Barefoot Friendly Since 2008

We’re delighted to be joining forces with our friends at Barefoot Wine once again as we launch the 8th Barefoot Wine Beach Rescue Project. This summer we’ll be heading to six of our most popular beaches. Starting at Edinburgh’s iconic Portobello Beach on Saturday May 16th from 1 – 3 pm, we’re calling for beach lovers across the UK to join us in their thousands as we aim to keep our beaches barefoot friendly for all to enjoy.

Our beaches are one of nature’s true playgrounds, free for all to use they bring great happiness and health to the millions of us who visit the stunning UK coast each year. Sadly these precious places and the wildlife that live within them are being suffocated and poisoned by untold amounts of marine litter. The examples below highlight just a tiny fraction of the harm that this modern day scourge of the sea causes;

  • 8 million items of litter that enter our oceans each day
  • There are over 2050 items of litter on every kilometre of beaches in the UK
  • 100,000 marine mammals and turtles and 1 million seabirds die each year from the ingestion of or entanglement in marine litter
  • Clearing litter from our beaches costs local authorities approximately £18 million each year

Beach clean projects such as the Barefoot Wine Beach Rescue Project are vital in raising awareness of and activism against the marine litter crisis. Since 2008 almost 6000 volunteers have helped us to sweep over 12.5 TONNES of marine litter from 46 beaches. We’ve also been lucky enough to have the support of TV presenters and environmentalists Kate Humble and Ben Fogle and were able to give beach cleaners the perfect reward in 2011 when superstar Ben Howard joined us at 3 beach clean locations to perform exclusive gigs, you can follow this link to see what could well be the perfect beach clean at Porthtowan in the summer of 2011! All this has combined perfectly to make this one of the most recognisable and effective beach clean tours in the UK.

SAS Beach cleans aren’t all hard work and saddening stats! They can be great fun and are a fantastic way to bring coastal communities together in doing something positive to protect and promote their beaches. The Barefoot Wine Beach Rescue Project takes this a step further and rewards volunteers for their hard work! Life-size sandcastle bars made entirely of sand are being created at each event complete with a Barefoot Wine drinks cabinet for the post-clean party. 

We’re also asking people to Tweet and Instagram photos of beaches with marine litter problems, using the hashtag #BarefootFriendly. Helping to raise awareness further and perhaps to organise even more SAS beach cleans this summer!

For full details of all Barefoot Wine Beach Rescue Project events taking place this summer please visit our Events Page and contact [email protected] for more details.