The Cabinet Secretary for Environment and Rural Affairs visited Saundersfoot last week to see first-hand a new collaborative approach to tackling marine litter.

Lesley Griffiths joined members of Pembrokeshire council (inlcluding local county councilor Phil Baker and Saundersfoot community council chairman Anthony Mattick), representatives from the business community, and volunteers, on Saundersfoot beach on Wednesday, August 23, where the council have introduced 10 new #2MinuteBeachClean boards, thanks to a Welsh Government grant.

The #2MinuteBeachClean scheme aims to rid the world’s beaches of marine litter and plastic pollution two minutes at a time. Each board includes a litter picker and bags that passers-by can use to pick marine little.

Bags of litter can be deposited inside adjacent bins which Pembrokeshire County Council will collect.

The scheme has been expanded following a successful trial at Newgale last year with boards already in place at Broadhaven South, Freshwater West, Coppett Hall, Saundersfoot and Broad Haven (North).

Lesley Griffiths said: “Marine litter is a growing issue and there is not one easy solution. We must work in partnership and across a range of areas to find solutions so I was delighted to see the popularity and success of this exciting new collaborative scheme.

“It’s all the more encouraging that the scheme is engaging the local population, and visitors to the area, in efforts to recycle and improve the local environment and I congratulate Pembrokeshire council on their success to date,” she added.

The visit took place the day before new local authority municipal waste management figures were published showing councils in Wales now recycle, reuse or compost 64 per cent of our waste, up from the previous year’s rate of 60 per cent.