May saw the arrival of glorious sunshine around the whole of the UK. This couldn’t have been timed any better as the Keep Britain Tidy team got their bucket and spade out, ready to launch 2019’s Blue Flag and Seaside awards.
The iconic Blue Flag is one of the world’s most recognised voluntary eco-labels awarded to beaches. To win one, a beach has to pass 33 stringent conditions, while the Seaside award is also the mark of a very high quality beach. To release the list, we found that Gen Z and millennials are ‘triggered’ by plastic on beaches alongside the fact that 54% of the population have been motivated by David Attenborough’s programmes to tidy up discarded litter.
We cleaned up with the media and the tide of coverage was an impressive 163 pieces.
There was a huge wave of national coverage (18 hits in fact) with the story landing on the front page of the Express (with a DPS inside) and giant pieces in The Times and The Telegraph, we also got standout pieces on Mail Online, Express, Mirror Online, and not one, not two, but three pieces on The Telegraph.
The team are looking forward to putting their new-found and in-depth knowledge of the best beaches in the UK to good use over the next few months.