CCF Team Spends The Day With Beach Guardian

Last week, the Cornwall Community Foundation (CCF) team took a break from the office to spend a day with one of our supported projects—Beach Guardian.

Who Are Beach Guardian?

Beach Guardian was founded by Rob Stevenson and his daughter Emily to address marine pollution and promote environmental education. While a lot of their work centres around the sea and activities like beach cleans, plastic pollution research, and school workshops, they have also got a land-based green initiative—Trevisker Community Meadow. The meadow is a space for community wellbeing and environmental care, bringing people together to engage with nature.

Visiting Trevisker Community Meadow

The CCF team began their day at Trevisker Community Meadow. Supported by CCF grants, the meadow serves as a hub for biodiversity, mental health, and outdoor learning. Rented off a nearby farmer, the meadow has been transformed from regularly farmed land, to a rewilded haven. As well as being a space where people can reconnect with nature, the meadow provides vegetables and herbs for visitors to harvest.

ERIC and Beach Cleaning

In the afternoon, having explored the meadows, Beach Guardian showed the team around their knew Environmental Recording Information Centre, also known as ERIC. Using microscopes, scanners, and a new microplastic sorting table, they can track, document and analyse marine debris and waste found on beach cleans. It is also a brilliant base for school and community groups to visit and learn more about Beach Guardian and their mission.

Having learnt mnore about Beach Guardian and what to look for on a beach clean, the team headed to a nearby beach. Taking part in a short beach clean, staff were stunning to see how much plastic there was on the sand and caugh in the seaweed. Particuarly noticeable was the amount of nurdles and microplastics as possible—tiny fragments that are almost invisible to the untrained eye but pose a significant threat to marine ecosystems. One unexpected discovery during the clean was a piece of the infamous “Lego Lost at Sea,” a relic from a 1997 cargo spill.

A big thank you to Rob Stevenson and Andy Whittle for hosting us and sharing your passion for protecting Cornwall’s natural spaces. It was amazing to see the impact grants like ours have on local community and how far they can go in supporting projectsA piece of work that delivers an output. like this one.