Bio-Bead Clean Up Could Take Years
Pollution from millions of plastic ‘bio-beads’ released by Southern Water’s Eastbourne treatment plant could take years to clean up, a public meeting in Rye heard this week.
More than 100 volunteers have been helping collect the beads, mainly from Camber Sands, although the plastic pollution has now spread to Rye Harbour Nature Reserve.
Hastings and Rye MP Helena Dollimore, who organised the public meeting, had earlier told the water company’s chief executive that it “beggars belief that Southern Water failed to detect the loss of millions of bio-beads for an entire fortnight, leaving them free to wash up on our East Sussex coastline and cause an environmental catastrophe.”
The Water Minister Emma Hardy MP joined Ms Dollimore at Camber and praised the local volunteers who, she said, had been amazing, “People have spent many hours brushing up the beads, literally using dust pans and sieves.”
Read the full story in the next issue of the Hastings Independent out on 21 November
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