Staff from another company have helped clean our shoreline with Beach Buddies.

Over the last couple of years, a lot of firms have taken part in the environmental initiative.

The latest company to get involved was telcommunications firm Wi-Manx, whose staff targeted Douglas beach.

They filled bags with plastic rubbish from the shoreline, including plastic bottles, bottle tops and other small items of plastic, plus shoe laces, rope and even a lightero.

Beach Buddies was founded by former newspaper editor Bill Dale in 2006, who this year received the Tynwald Honour for his success in getting thousands of people involved in cleaning up beaches.

The charity was recognised by UNESCO Biosphere in 2016 as an excellent example of how to tackle the problem of marine litter on the world’s beaches

Bill has also won numerous awards for its achievements including the British Empire Medal (BEM) for services to the marine environment.

Sarah Read, Wi-Manx’s marketing manager, said: ’We were delighted to be able to support Beach Buddies last week when members of the Wi-Manx team took part in a beach clean on Douglas beach.

’Beach Buddies does a lot of great work on our island in helping to keep the local beaches free from rubbish which has a devastating effect on sea animals and seabirds, so we were pleased to be able to do our bit to assist the charity

’We were quite surprised about the amount of rubbish that we found that washes up on our shoreline."

Mr Dale said: ’We run lots of events for companies, and it’s always great to see new faces who have never been beach cleaning before, and hear their reaction when they see for themselves the amount of marine litter that washes up on our beaches.

’The Wi-Manx team seemed to really enjoy themselves, and all said they wanted to come back again, so it was really worthwhile. I warned them beforehand that beach cleaning becomes addictive. I think they now understand what I meant!’

As well as the environmental work carried out by Beach Buddies, the Manx Government also recently introduced its strategy for addressing the environmental challenges that single use plastics causes. The strategy is to be rolled out from within Government before it is then progressed to the wider community, where it could include a levy on plastic bags and measures to reduce food and drink packaging.

Beach Buddies is sponsored by FIM Capital.