Pebbles Beach in Pak Kok was in a terrible state yesterday, with so much more refuse coming in. Nevertheless, volunteers did a good job of cleaning up – almost 60 people joined in , between 9am and 2pm.

However, the back of the beach is terrible – and in three cleanups, despite all that we have picked up, we really are not making any progress.

It took 40 minutes to fill the bag in the foreground of the picture (below) and you can see the polystyrene debris goes back to the hillside and is very thick.

There is also debris at the base of the concrete – in fact, we will not see just how much until it has been excavated properly.

We need senior decision-makers in government to see for themselves. It is very difficult to show in pictures or even describe in words. It helps to have still, dry conditions, but by noon yesterday it became windy and them then as much polystyrene dust is blowing away as you can manage to pick up.

Hand-picking is so slow, that we continue to leave so much of a substance that is toxic and dangerous to marine life right on the seashore.

And as we go into the wintertide, we know that there will be enough to do to clean up the foreshore as more rubbish arrives (the debris in the first picture was not there a week ago, but this amount is perfectly normal for this time of the year).