Seaside Scavenging and Surfers Against Sewage

On our recent holiday to Pembrokeshire, I found that my environmentalism, which had been difficult to keep at the forefront of the way I live what with house moves and renovations, parenting, worries about money, clothes and religion, not to mention trying to rediscover some kind of social life after the hermitude of COVID, was burgeoning again.

This was for a variety of reasons: firstly, it's hard to spend time in such an incredibly beautiful area as the Pembrokeshire coastline without being in some way touched by it. There's a moment on the way to our holiday cottage (we go to the same place every year), when the narrow road, set deeply between ferny banks and clawed hedges of gorse, has wound its way out onto the cliffs, and suddenly the hedges fall away and the vast expanse of Newgale beach is revealed, as if a magician has flung back a veil and shouted, "Ta da!" It never gets old, never ceases to take the breath away, and that seemingly endless vista of sky and sea is different each time, whether grey and wild, the peach and gold of sunset, or foaming and depthless turquoise on white sand. How can anyone not want to protect that, to preserve it? 

Secondly, whilst we were away I read a really fascinating book, Free by Katharine Hibbert. It's a memoir of the time Katharine spent as a squatter, mostly without money, living literally off the vast array of things that are thrown away every day. Having worked in the waste industry I thought I had some idea of the scale of our society's astonishing wastefulness, but this book opened my eyes in a whole new way. I think that reading this book had me looking at what was around me with fresh eyes - I don't normally go through bins, as a general rule, but when I was taking a bag of rubbish out I noticed a windbreak jammed into the holiday cottages' shared bin. It's probably broken, I reasoned, but some spirit of devilry made me drag the whole thing out to see what, exactly, was wrong with it. Turns out, nothing whatsoever. It's currently in our cupboard under the stairs, looking forward to next year's holiday. 

On an old blog of mine, when I was still working in the rag bins at the local recycling centre, I was quite open about which items of my clothing had come from the bins, and I took a lot of flak for it. I totally appreciate that dumpster diving isn't everyone's cup of tea (although perhaps we ought to consider those for whom it's the only option. Trash picking is a way of making a living in some countries. In the UK, cafes, supermarkets and restaurants throw away tons of unopened food on a daily basis - yet many throw bleach on the food or otherwise render it spoiled or inaccessible to deter people from trying to retrieve it. How is it even vaguely acceptable to send food to landfill when there are people who are going hungry?! Who writes these rules?!). But why is it considered fine to throw away usable - or even unworn - clothing, yet distasteful to retrieve or make use of it? Doesn't say anything good about this culture's values, if you ask me.

Thirdly, we spent a lot of time in and around the city of St Davids. I was really heartened and excited by the eco community I could see in action there - from environmental protests in the high street to sustainable, fair trade and zero waste shops, and a wild food cafe. I haven't had a lot of luck connecting with other people in my area who are passionate about the environment - there's a local Extinction Rebellion branch, but they sadly don't answer their emails - so other than Greenpeace Zoom calls, I generally don't get to discuss these issues outside of monologuing at friends and family (which is definitely a thing that I do. I mean, I try not to be That Person, but sometimes all the frustration and the worry and the love has to go somewhere, y'know?). And let's be honest, even were we not in a climate crisis, a noticeboard advertising 'Slow Flow' yoga classes alongside coastal foraging courses in a shop selling small batch local ales with folkloric names, and beauty products made out of seaweed, is definitely my jam.

So, all this in mind, it was both deeply disappointing and incredibly enraging when the first piece of news I read upon returning home was about my local water supplier knowingly and deliberately discharging sewage into the ocean.

Not once.

But 7,000 times.

Hugo Tagholm, CEO of environmental group Surfers Against Sewage, said, "It’s absolutely scandalous that Southern Water dumped raw sewage in the sea for so long, hiding their tracks as they went so they could increase their profits. This shocking, criminal capitalism is one of the worst cases of companies wilfully putting profits before the health of people or planet.

"Worse still is that water companies, including Southern Water, seem to continue dumping raw sewage into fragile, precious and finite blue habitats, with over 400,000 separate raw sewage pollution events pinned to their collective reputation in 2020 alone. All whilst their CEOs walk away with huge pay packets and dividends."

We are paying for the privilege of having our effluent dumped into the sea. How dare you, Southern Water. I'd like to round this post off with some snappy parting shot, but honestly I think I'm too disgusted.