How can an energy consultancy company help keep our oceans clean?

Optimised Energy is an award-winning energy services business. Its Blackpool HQ is just a few hundred metres from the beach, which makes coastal pollution a very personal, all too visible issue for the team.

Members of Optimised Energy’s Blackpool office recently joined forces with LOVEmyBEACH to take part in a beach clean along Blackpool’s sandy shoreline. The volunteers set out across the six-mile stretch, collecting bottles, cans, plastic wrappers and more. The beach clean collected 10kg of waste, 10kg that would otherwise have found its way into (or back into) the Irish Sea.

LOVEmyBEACH

The LOVEmyBEACH campaign was created in 2013 by Keep Britain Tidy. The campaign works with individuals and partner organisations across the North-West to help keep local beaches and bathing waters clean and free from pollution.

The Scale of Coastal Waste

Since 1994, the waste on England’s beaches has increased threefold, but beach cleans do appear to be having a significant effect. From a peak in 2014 when more than 950 items were found per 100m, in 2019 that figure had fallen to just over 600 items. Overall, the UK picture was 7% better in 2019 than in 2018. Plastic and polystyrene remain the most commonly found items, found three times as frequently as the next most common item (cigarette stubs).

A Simple Difference

Senior Energy Analyst Kirsty Bullough, one of Optimised Energy’s volunteers, said: “It was great that we were able to do something relatively simple that would make an immediate difference to our local environment. The wellbeing factor of being active, doing something for the community and working together on something that was a bit different made it an enjoyable morning.”

This story shows how Optimised Energy supports Goal 14: Life Below Water, specifically Target 14.1: “By 2025, prevent and significantly reduce marine pollution of all kinds, in particular from land-based activities, including marine debris and nutrient pollution.”

About Optimised Energy

Optimised Energy is a full-service energy consulting business. They deliver energy cost and kilowatt hour savings for their clients through a ‘Managed Energy Services’ approach that combines best-of-breed hardware, software and service.

Learn more about Optimised Energy.