All cleans are welcome, whether it’s a large public community clean or a small private clean.
Simply register your clean here and arrange it for whichever date and location suits you best (beach, street, park, river, mountain). By registering you’ll also be covered by our public liability insurance and can receive free equipment for up to 30 people.
You decide whether it’s a public clean that will appear on our map for anyone to attend, or if you’d prefer it private for yourself or friends and family.
Want to lend a hand and bring your energy to an existing clean? Simply look on our map of public cleans to find your nearest one and get stuck in. All the cleans found on our map are run by members of the public, volunteering their time to run a clean.
Click on the clean you’re interested in to find out the location, date, start time, meeting point info, and the email address of the clean leader. You don’t need to pre-register, but it can be good to send them a message on the email provided to check that they will have enough equipment for everyone interested.
The clean leader will have completed a risk assessment for their clean and everyone attending will be covered by public liability insurance.
We recommend double checking on the day of the clean that it’s still listed on the map to make sure it’s still going ahead and hasn’t been cancelled.
We also recommend that businesses register their own clean, rather than attending a public clean.
Dress appropriately – Make sure you’re dressed for the unpredictable British weather. If you’ve registered your clean with us, you’ll receive a free Million Mile Clean kit which contains gloves, reusable sacks, a first aid kit and hand sanitizer. If you’re able to bring your own gloves then more people can get involved.
Show Up – Arrive at the clean meeting point at the designated time, say “hello” to the clean leader and they will welcome you to the clean.
Kit Up – Once you’ve let them know you’re there, grab a pair of gloves and a reusable sack and you’re ready to go.
Listen Up – The clean leader will run through how to stay safe. As a leader it’s good to explain the threat that plastic pollution poses to our environment, what to look out for during the clean and – most importantly – what we can do to help.
The Main Event – Each clean usually runs for two hours, so make sure you get back to base in plenty of time to reassemble with the rest of the group and separate your recyclables.
Weird & Wonderful – Keep an eye out for weird, wonderful and old items. It’s always interesting to discuss how and why they may have got there!
High Fives & Home – The clean leader might give a round up of the clean and you can have a look at your findings. Hopefully you had fun and maybe even made some new friends. Time to head home and relax- you’ve earned it!
Each kit provides equipment for up to 30 people and includes reusable gloves in a range of sizes, reusable rubbish sacks, a first aid kit, hand sanitizer, and useful information leaflets.
Please note that a kit for just 10 people costs SAS £40. If you’d like to make a donation towards the cost of your kit please do so on our donation page.
After you’ve completed your clean we would love for you to keep hold of your cleaning equipment for any future cleans, or to pass it round to friends and family who also want to get cleaning. The gloves are washable and reusable, and the bags can be re-used. We ask that they get reused as much as possible, however once they’re beyond use, please pop them in the recycling. Our sacks are made out of Polypropylene (5 – PP) the same material used for margarine tubs and trays. This is widely recyclable at home, however please check your councils local guidance.
However, if you have any clean, unused equipment that you don’t plan on using, please post it back to us at:
Million Mile Clean Team
Surfers Against Sewage
Unit 2, Wheel Kitty Workshops
St. Agnes
Cornwall
TR5 0RD
We are a small team at HQ, therefore please make sure to allow at least 2 weeks for your equipment to arrive before the day of your event. We will send your kit to you as soon as possible.
We welcome all organisations to do cleans with us, provided that your organisation doesn’t have a negative impact on the environment. Please register your clean with us by selecting whichever date suits you best, and we can then send out some free equipment for your clean. Please note that an equipment kit for just 10 people costs SAS £40. If you would like to make a donation to cover this cost please do so on our donation page.
If you need any extra information on organising the clean , or need kit for more than 30 people please email [email protected]. If you have any business specific enquires please email our Corporate Partnerships Officer at [email protected]
We welcome all ages, however you must be 16 or over to complete a registration for a clean with us. If you are younger than 16 and wish to do a clean, please have a parent or guardian register on your behalf. This includes Duke of Edinburgh participants who are doing their volunteering with us.
Cleans are designed to be a fun day out for all the family. Make sure the kids are suitably dressed, and if you can, bring child-sized gloves.
We understand that not all young children can sustain the fully planned cleaning time, so you’re welcome to stay for as long as you like. Every small action and every minute of your time is appreciated.
Please note that for safeguarding reasons all Duke of Edinburgh and School cleans will not appear publicly on our map.
Absolutely! We are an Approved Activity Provider with Duke of Edinburgh, meaning you can do your Bronze, Silver and Gold volunteering with us and we can officially sign it off.
Many DofE students complete their volunteering with us by organising and carrying out their own beach, river, mountain, park or street cleans. You can choose where and when you clean, and we provide the resources you need.
Before you get started:
If you are under 18, a parent or guardian must register the cleans on your behalf. As the clean leader, they are responsible for the safety of everyone attending the clean and must accompany you and any other under-18s taking part.
Time frames:
To meet the DofE requirements, your cleans must cover a minimum of 1 hour a week for the duration of your volunteering period.
For each DofE level this would be:
Bronze – 1 clean per week, for 13 weeks, totalling 13 unique cleans.
Silver* – 1 clean per week, for 26 weeks, totalling 26 unique cleans.
Gold** – 1 clean per week, for 52 weeks, totalling 52 unique cleans.
For your Silver and Gold volunteering, you can do longer cleans, to occur less frequently e.g. a 2 hour clean each fortnight.
But you cannot condense cleans to less than 1 per month and you cannot complete more than 6 hours in a month.
* If you did not already complete a Bronze DofE, and are doing the additional 6 months of volunteering, this will total 52 unique cleans.
** If you did not already complete a Silver DofE (even if you’ve done Bronze), and are doing the additional 6 months of volunteering, this will total a 78 unique cleans.
Logging your cleans:
You must register every clean you complete with us. This allows us to track your volunteering, provide insurance cover and approve your DofE hours.
Register all your Million Mile Cleans here
When you register your first clean, you can also request free cleaning equipment.
Providing evidence of your volunteering:
We ask for photographic evidence of your cleans so that we can verify and sign off your volunteering hours.
Your photos can show:
You carrying out your clean; or
The rubbish you collected.
Please submit all your photos together at the end of your volunteering period:
Once you have finished your volunteering, email [email protected] with your DofE number to let us know that you are ready for your volunteering to be signed off.
Collecting citizen science data:
As part of your Million Mile Cleans, we ask you to record crucial information about the items and brands of rubbish you find.
This data is an important part of our citizen science programme. It helps us identify the companies and products contributing to plastic pollution and supports our People vs Plastic campaign.
After each clean, please submit your findings here.
Fundraising:
If you’d like to raise money alongside your volunteering, you can set up a Million Mile Clean fundraiser through JustGiving.
Find out more about fundraising with Surfers Against Sewage
Your DofE assessor:
If your DofE provider requires an assessor, you can use:
Sarah Sheldon
Communities Officer – Million Mile Clean
[email protected]
Questions?
Please check our Million Mile Clean FAQs or email us at [email protected].
Huge thank you for supporting the Million Mile Clean and helping us tackle plastic pollution!
Please note that for safeguarding reasons all DofE cleans will not appear publicly on our map.
It’s always good to notify the local council, beach manager or private land owner for any organised clean event. You don’t always receive a reply, but that shouldn’t stop you from protecting the areas you love.
When you register your clean with us, we will send you a land owner notification letter which you can amend to notify the land owner of your upcoming clean. The notification letter provides the land owner with details of your clean and gives them the opportunity to arrange a rubbish collection or advise on where to dispose of the rubbish safely.
We’ve collaborated with Waterhaul to help get fishing net, rope or other forms of ghost gear off our coastlines, and recycled into cleaning gear. We exclusively use Waterhaul’s 100% recycled litter pickers made from the ghost gear you help to collect. Please fill out their form here to report your findings, and Waterhaul will endeavour to recover the ghost gear, or collaborate with other volunteers and organisations to do so, and then collect for recycling.
Can I collect nurdles at my MMC clean?
In many affected areas yes, but check first. Council advice varies by beach and is changing often. Some councils have published volunteer guidance, others are asking people to wait for organised sessions. Check your council’s web page within 24 hours of your clean and again when you arrive. If the council says not to, please don’t.
Are nurdles dangerous to touch?
The UKHSA advice published by councils is that the public health risk is very low and the pellets themselves are not toxic. However, they can pick up pollutants and bacteria from the water, so the advice is not to handle them with bare hands. Wear waterproof gloves, don’t eat, drink, smoke or vape while collecting, and wash your hands well afterwards.
What equipment do I need?
Waterproof gloves (bring your own), plus a sieve, scoop or dustpan and brush if you have one. Sieving the top layer of sand is quicker than picking by hand. A kneeling mat helps too, as it’s stooping work, so take regular breaks.
What do I do with the nurdles I collect?
Double-bag them or use a sealed container, and take them to your council’s designated collection point only. Locations are on the council webpages. Never put them in ordinary bins or leave bags on the beach, as a split bag puts everything straight back into the environment. Fill bags no more than half full. Pellets are much heavier than normal beach litter and an overfilled bag is hard to lift and likely to split. Please weigh or estimate what you collect and record it when you log your clean. This data helps show the scale of the spill and supports the case for the polluter to pay for the clean-up.
Can children take part?
Nurdle collection isn’t suitable for young children, as the pellets are a choking hazard and it involves close hand contact with the strandline. All under-18s must be accompanied and closely supervised by a responsible adult at all times (per standard RA); for pellet collection. Older children can take part under close adult supervision with their own gloves, and must be supervised at arm’s length and must wear their own gloves. Please leave dogs at home for nurdle cleans. Pellets are harmful to dogs if eaten, and affected beaches have dogs-on-leads advice in place.
Why is the advice different on different beaches?
The response involves several councils plus the Environment Agency and specialist contractors, and each council is making its own decisions about volunteer involvement on its stretch of coast. We know it’s frustrating, but checking your own council’s page is the only reliable way to know where you stand.
Am I insured?
Registered MMC cleans carried out in line with the standard risk assessment and the MMC Nurdle Risk Assessment and Safety Briefing are covered by our public liability insurance. Collecting outside a registered clean, or where a council has advised against it, may not be covered.
Please email the team on [email protected] and we can remove the clean, or make any changes to meeting locations, times and dates. Please make sure to inform us of your clean location name and date so that we can locate it in our records to edit.
Please note that we will only be able to amend or cancel cleans during our working hours, 9-5, Monday – Friday. Therefore if your clean is due to be cancelled over the weekend, please inform us within working hours so that we can get this updated in time.
For any data collection you’ve completed on items and/or brands please make sure to submit your results! You can do this through our Submit Your Results form. Every bit of data you collect helps to fuel our fight. Together, we can build irrefutable data to demand change, push vital legislation through the door and hold polluters to account.
We love to receive photos and stories from your clean. Please send them over to us through our MMC Photo and Stories form.
Make sure to register any future cleans you plan to do on our Register a clean page.
We would love for you to keep hold of your cleaning equipment for any future cleans, or to pass it round to friends and family who also want to get cleaning. The gloves are washable and reusable, and the bags can be rinsed out to reuse.
However, if you have any clean, unused equipment that you don’t plan on using, please post it back to us at:
Million Mile Clean Team
Surfers Against Sewage
Unit 2, Wheel Kitty Workshops
St. Agnes
Cornwall
TR5 0RD
Absolutely – please submit your data for all past cleans on our Submit Your Results page. You’ll be providing us with vital information which helps us to accurately calculate how many people have volunteered, how many miles have been cleaned, and how much rubbish has been collected. You can also provide data for our Brand Audit which allows us to hold the biggest single use plastic polluters to account!
Once your clean is over, please recycle as much of the rubbish as possible and safely dispose of the rest in on-site bins. We recommend notifying the land owner before your clean takes place, as they can advise you on the best place to dispose of the rubbish safely. If your beach is council owned, they will have arrangements in place for rubbish collection. If you are unable to recycle or dispose of the rubbish on site, please do so in your home waste collection or at a waste and recycling centre.
Sharps collection: To dispose of used sharps bin, please contact your GP or pharmacy to see if they may be able to dispose of your sharps bins directly. Alternatively please contact your local council to see how they can properly dispose of the sharps bin. Volunteers must be advised that SAS do not ask that sharp objects (i.e. syringes, broken glass, sharp metals) or unhygienic waste, such as dog poo or sanitary towels be collected during a SAS clean. This decision to touch/pick up such items lies entirely with each individual volunteer. Sharps containers can be requested a minimum of two weeks prior to an event taking place if the Volunteer Clean Leaders choose at their own risk to collect sharp items.
Million Mile Clean sacks: Our sacks are reusable and recyclable! We ask that they get reused as much as possible, however once they’re beyond use, please pop them in the recycling. Our sacks are made out of Polypropylene (5 – PP) the same material used for margarine tubs and trays. This is widely recyclable at home, however please check your councils local guidance.
You can clean anywhere, anytime – any beach, street, river, mountain or park! Unfortunately, plastic pollution can be found all over the UK and every area deserves our protection.
Absolutely, you don’t have to organise a big community event to take part in our campaign. You can register your clean as an individual clean, and if needed just request equipment for yourself. All of your cleaning action counts towards our Million Mile goal.
You can do as much or as little as you want. As a goal we are encouraging people to clean 10 miles throughout the year, but you do not need to do the full 10 miles. You can revisit the same area multiple times throughout the year, or clean a new area each time, every step counts towards our million mile goal.
You can Join our Strava group here which makes it easy and accurate to track how far you walk whilst on your clean.
Just make sure to submit your results after your clean to record how many miles you’ve done – you will be sent an email with a link to submit your results after your clean has taken place. If you haven’t already registered a clean that you’ve completed but want to share your results with us, please do so by entering your findings on our Submit Your Results page.
Yes, provided that you register your clean with us and review and complete the relevant risk assessment, then the clean will be covered by our public liability insurance. You must do this for each new clean you undertake in order to be covered by our insurance.
Please note – cleaning events are cancelled if they fall in the location and time period of a Met Office issued weather warning. If this applies for your clean, please contact us ASAP so that we can remove your clean from our database and it should not go ahead.
Strava is an app for your mobile, laptop or tablet which counts the number of steps you take when out on your daily exercise. We are asking all of our volunteers to download the app and join our group, which makes it easy and accurate to track how far you walk whilst on your clean.
We recommend creating a Facebook event page which can be linked to your clean on our map. This is a great way to spread the word, get more volunteers involved and keep them updated.
It’s also great to create social media posts, such as on Instagram, to get the word around.
When you register your clean with us we will send a link to our social assets that you can use to promote the event.
Please note that use of our main SAS logo is restricted, however we have lots of Million Mile Clean specific assets that you can use to promote your event!
