More than 1000 bodyboards recovered from Devon and Cornwall beaches

A total of 1,011 broken body boards have been collected in 2022, collected compared with 1,503 last year

More than 1,000 discarded body boards have been collected from beaches across the South West this year.

They were collected by Keep Britain Tidy's Ocean Recovery Project and community groups from beaches including Croyde, Saunton, Bude and Newquay.

A total of 1,011 broken body boards have been collected compared with 1,503 last year.

Ocean Recovery says cheap bodyboards release polystyrene balls into the environment when they break.

Beachgoers are starting to move away from polystyrene boards says Keep Britain Tidy's Ocean Recovery Project

Neil Hembrow from Ocean Recovery, said: "Each year tens of thousands of these cheap, poor quality boards are manufactured in southern China and transported 11,000 miles to the UK only to end up as waste for communities across the South West to deal with when people's summer breaks have ended.

"Although there's a long way to go, it's really encouraging to see signs that people are starting to make the right choices, whether it's by buying a longer lasting higher quality board, using our £1 rent scheme or buying wooden belly boards which have seen a recent resurgence."