Islanders have a lot of bottle as thousands get washed up

The island’s regular beachcombers found themselves picking up the Avant bottles from the start of the weekend and as of yesterday lunchtime about 2,500 had been reported to the Found on the Beach Guernsey Facebook group.

Evidence of where the bottles came from was found by a beachcomber at Richmond, where the remains of a pallet with Avant-branded polythene attached were discovered.

Facebook group administrator Sam Reoch had people reporting their findings and kept a log of how many were found on each bay, but said that she suspected there were many more that were not reported.

While some people were picking up anywhere from one to a dozen or so, others collected hundreds, with the record being at Perelle on Saturday where a total of 535 were found.

Group member Wendy Le Prevost picked up 65 bottles when she went to Fort Richmond on Thursday.

In a video posted to the group she urged people to get out and pick up the bottles.

‘Our beautiful Guernsey beaches are going to be littered with plastics, which is an environmental disaster, really,’ she said.

Diana Kennedy is a regular beachcomber but said she went out more this week to collect the bottles.

Joined by her daughter Jessica, 10, and friend Mark Le Lievre, she collected 392 bottles at Vazon and Crocq on Saturday.

‘I went on Thursday to walk the dog on Vazon and found 29 along the top of the stones,’ she said.

‘I thought it must have been a broken crate.’

After posting it to the Facebook group she discovered that others had also been picking up bottles so went back to the beach on Friday and Saturday.