The beach: a liminal space between hope and despair
The beach holds a special place in my heart. Gazing over the sea, listening to the sound of the breaking waves and feeling the sand between my toes inspires awe, instils calm, releases tension and provides a transitional space for wellbeing, recreation and many other of our human needs and desires. The beach is a place for families to come together and for everyday stresses to be relieved. Its value cannot be reduced to a purely economic one, as values appear in the human response to the world (Rolston 1981). The beach offers nature in perpetuity. It is a place outside the constraints of time and matter. The beach is a trickster margin between land and sea; an eternally shifting shape between nature and culture. This liminality invites transformation. However, liminality also offers room for transgression. No other wilderness falls victim to human interference faster than our coastline. 542 pieces of litter are found per 100 metres of beach on average in Northern Ireland (KNIB 2023). 90 percent of those are plastics; and 80 percent of all litter is estimated to originate on land. In other words, it’s us dumping our waste where it shouldn’t be. As an avid beach cleaner myself, I sympathise with the overwhelming feelings of anger and despair that befalls those that try so desperately to care for our coastline. And there are many of us. The Marine Conservation Society reports that 5,845 volunteers lifted litter from UK beaches in 2024, marking an increase of 8 percent to the previous year (MCS 2025). What we see here is Enviro-Leisure Activism in its purest form.
Enviro-Leisure Activism is a concept devised by me as part of a Grounded Theory Ethnographic study of beach cleaners in Northern Ireland (see Power 2021). It reveals that beach cleaners operate in social worlds that are both informal and self-regulated through beach cleaning groups that provide a conduit for cognitive and emotional identification with shared perspectives and interests. Place attachment to the beach is strong, where feeling close to a place increases the willingness to participate in Enviro-Leisure Activism. This closeness bestows a spiritual value on the beach. The beach is consumed through a nostalgic lens. As beach cleaners bear witness to the environmental damage to their beloved beach, their feelings change from nostalgia to solastalgia – a deep sadness at the destruction of nature befalls them (Albrecht 2005). I observed how storytelling about the litter found on beaches soothes and provides a coping mechanism for beach cleaners. We see storytelling as a form of narrative therapy in situ. Stories improve mood and create bonds. They act as emotional barriers to the reality of the litter problem that confronts us. These stories create discourse coalitions and an authentic voice for beach cleaners. However, beach cleaning may not be the right word to describe the activity. I have observed a strong element of competitiveness among beach cleaners. There is a thrill to hunting for litter, which shows the liminality between environmental and leisure motivations of taking part. By telling nature’s tale, beach cleaners not only promote environmental values, but also engage in an intellectual adventure. They contribute to the growing domain of citizen science. The beach becomes a liminal space between physical and intellectual endeavour.
Now I work with a team of researchers on an AHRC-funded Green Transition Ecosystem project called Future Island-Island. As beach cleaners lifted a staggering 250,000 piece of litter last year alone (MCS 2025), we raise the question: what happens then? Emboldened by Enviro-Leisure Activism, beach cleaners face the reality of their haul ending on landfill sites. Our team from Future Island-Island’s Drastic Plastic work package sought to address this issue by proposing a new, circular beach clean methodology: Enter Beach Clean 2.0. As we want to address the wicked problem of ocean plastics, we envision a future where items of waste are turned into items of use; and thereby diverted from landfill back into a circular system of positive re-design. We merge design (Prof Justin Magee of Ulster University and Mr Jonny Weir of BigSmall Design) with polymer science (Dr Bronagh Millar, Queen’s University Belfast and Plaswire) and social-psychology (Dr Susann Power, Ulster University) to design a method of beach cleaning, which uses a novel beach clean guide alongside colour-coded bags to sort collected litter into four categories: plastic rigids, twine, braided rope, and everything else. After trials at NI Science Festival and Rathlin Sound Festival in 2024, Beach Clean 2.0 scaled up for International Coastal Cleanup Day. In eight groups, 96 volunteers collected 172kg of waste from Carlingford Lough to Lough Foyle before being transferred to our labs for processing. We believe that only by combining transdisciplinary research can we provide pathways to alternative knowledge that can tackle this ongoing concern of ocean plastics (Brennan and Rondón-Sulbarán 2019). Looking ahead, the Drastic Plastic team is focused on scaling Beach Clean 2.0, developing collection points, and pushing the boundaries of recycled product design. Future Island-Island’s work underscores a vital shift with ocean plastics representing an opportunity for transformation. For the beach, we tip the scales of liminality from despair to hope.
References:
- Albrecht, G. (2005). ‘Solastalgia’. A new concept in health and identity. PAN: philosophy activism nature, (3), 41-55.
- Brennan, M., & Rondón-Sulbarán, J. (2019). Transdisciplinary research: Exploring impact, knowledge and quality in the early stages of a sustainable development project. World Development, 122, 481-491.
- Keep Northern Ireland Beautiful (2023) Marine Litter Report 2022. Published online: https://www.daera-ni.gov.uk/articles/marine-litter
- Marine Conservation Society (2025) Great British Beach Clean 2024: The results. Published online: https://www.mcsuk.org/news/great-british-beach-clean-2024-the-results/
- Power, S. (2022). Enjoying your beach and cleaning it too: a Grounded Theory Ethnography of enviro-leisure activism. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 30(6), 1438-1457.
- Rolston III, H. (1981). Values in nature. Environmental Ethics, 3(2), 113-129.