Sewage scandal: Woman finds UK beach ‘full of sanitary towels’ - slamming government a ‘disgrace’ as sewer system ‘crumbles’

A woman has slammed the government as a “disgrace” and “utterly disgusting” after she continues to find “hundreds” of sanitary towels across a beach in Yorkshire. Helen Taylor, a volunteer with Marske litter action, has found the sewage debris strewn across Marske-by-the-Sea beach, all the way along between Redcar and Saltburn.

On Saturday 4 November Ms Taylor posted on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter: “Is anyone bored of sewage yet?? No?? Good. I asked @nwater_care to clear up two days ago, still filthy. Why is it the public’s job to clean this up? £105 million paid to shareholders! Criminal!”

Images show sanitary towels washed up on the Yorkshire beach which is rated on TripAdvisor as a “beautiful beach” with a “miles lovely walk” by those who have visited. Ms Taylor said £105 million is paid to shareholders of water firm Northumbrian Water “while the already overloaded sewage system crumbles and the beaches and rivers are full of sanitary towels.” She added: “How is that right? It’s a disgrace.”

Campaign group Surfers Against Sewage figures show there were 963 hours of discharges into bathing waters across the Northumbrian Water area last year. In 2022, raw sewage was dumped into England’s rivers and seas for 1.75 million hours - or 825 times a day on average.

Ms Taylor told NationalWorld that the government’s priorities “are all wrong despite the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) claiming to the contrary” and it “is utterly disgusting.” She added: “This government is a disgrace. All they care about is staying in power and making sure their friends make cash.

“‘Screw the environment, trash the planet’ should be their campaign slogan. We live in a world where the people voted into power are destroying it while we stare at screens and watch television!”

It comes after a woman also shared to NationalWorld how she picks up “hundreds” of sewage debris including condoms and period products when she walks across her local beach in Newcastle. She posted on X on October 29: “It’s disgusting walking at North Shields beach strewn with used condoms, sanitary pads tampons , and tampon applicators! I pick up hundreds but they keep coming!”.

Northumbrian Water said that “over the last couple of weeks” it has “seen periods of heavy rainfall meaning at times our network was working at capacity to protect customers’ homes, businesses and the region’s infrastructure flooding”. The firm added: “The overflows which, when under pressure, release rain, surface and heavily diluted wastewater do have screens fitted which catch the majority of the unflushables that we unfortunately see in our system.

“It is possible that some sanitary products could have escaped the system during these extreme rainfall events, and our teams are regularly out and about to clean up these products from our beaches, restoring them to their good or excellent standard. This is also why we ask our customers to please bin wipes, sanitary products and other plastics, because only paper, pee and poo should go down the loo.”

NationalWorld has contacted Defra for comment.