Brighton beach has been littered with thousands of onions, dust masks, plastic gloves, and other cargo after shipping containers capsized off the Sussex coast. Coral Evans, founder of the Leave No Trace Brighton community group, discovered the debris on Tuesday evening, describing it as an unusual winter sight.
Evans returned the next day to find hundreds of thousands of onions scattered across the sand, along with sweet potatoes, unopened beer cans, and single-use plastic coffee cup lids. Brighton and Hove City Council collected 1.9 tonnes of waste from beaches on Thursday, nearly four times the usual amount for this time of year.
East Sussex County Council confirmed it was aware of debris and container remains washing up over the past week, and is working with district councils to arrange safe removal. In Eastbourne, thousands of bags of chips created golden piles up to two-and-a-half feet deep, while West Sussex beaches have seen similar issues worsened by Storm Goretti.
Donna Trethewey of Selsey Beach Litter Ninjas reported that 24 containers had gone overboard in three incidents over six weeks, the first on 6 December involving 16 containers from the refrigerated cargo ship Baltic Klipper in the Solent. Containers broke up on shore, releasing bananas, avocados, and plastic packaging.
Dr Simon Boxall, an oceanography academic at the University of Southampton, noted that an estimated 2,200 containers fall off ships each year, citing the 1992 Friendly Floatees incident as an example of how debris can spread globally via ocean currents.
