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Schoolchildren have helped strip dozens of broken bodyboards discarded on Cornish beaches so they can be recycled. The Bodyboard Breakdown event, hosted at Newquay Junior Academy, saw more than 40 children work alongside volunteers to deconstruct dozens of discarded and broken bodyboards.
These boards were collected over the summer by the Newquay Clean volunteers group from recycling stations installed at three local beaches at Fistral, the UK's surfing capital, as well as other popular beaches including Towan in Newquay Bay and at Porth, out towards Watergate Bay.
Newquay Mayor and Cornwall councillor Drew Creek told CornwallLive: "Polystyrene bodyboards are harmful to the environment and get broken and pieces of polystyrene end up in our oceans and harming marine life.
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"There is safety aspect to these bodyboards too. People try to ride these boards when it's too big for them and they break easily. The RNLI have told us it's one of the biggest risks they see in the sea and the biggest rescue area they find across the summer months. We're trying to stop people from buying them."
The Ocean Recovery Project estimates that more than 16,000 polystyrene bodyboards are discarded on UK beaches every year. Each one is manufactured on the other side of the world and shipped thousands of miles, sometimes for as little as a few hours in the waves before they end up in the bin.
Since 2010, some 7,000 bodyboards have been collected and recycled by Keep Britain Tidy's Ocean Recovery project. In 2021 alone, more than 1,080 snapped polystyrene bodyboards were recovered from just three Devon and Cornwall beaches at Croyde Bay in Devon and Fistral at Newquay and Bude in Cornwall.
At the beginning of the year, CornwallLive launched its #BanTheBoards campaign to highlight the issues around cheap polystyrene body boards, promote the businesses who sell the alternatives and encourage community rental schemes.
See why we're campaigning to Ban the Boards
Cllr Creek added: "The children already know this stuff. This is further embedding in them the importance of buying the right thing as a consumer and protecting our natural environment. These children are already environmental champions in their own rights, but getting through to them helps us get the message to adults as well."
Newquay Clean: A collaborative group of likeminded stakeholders including Newquay Town Council, Cornwall Council, local councillors, Newquay Business Improvement District and the Newquay Marine Group, dedicated to tackling litter and pollution in the seaside town.
After being stripped of their component parts, the bodyboard will be responsibly recycled through the national environmental charity, Keep Britain Tidy and its Ocean Recovery project.
Former UK Bodyboard Champion Rob Barber, who runs Newquay Activity Centre, took part in the event at Newquay Junior Academy. he said: "This school has got a hotbed of young surfers and bodyboarders so by catching them at this age and educating them they understand the necessity of using equipment that's environmentally friendly and safe which is so important to us all."
He added: "These polystyrene boards are exactly what people should not be buying. Although they are a cheap option to get in the water you need to look beyond that as a bigger picture. If they're putting people in danger and are bad for the environment, then if it costs a little more to buy a bodyboard that will last then that has to be the option going forward."
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