SIXTY students collected dozens of bags of rubbish at a beach clean on Portland.

Students from Kingston Maurward College, along with staff and representatives from the Raw Foundation, spent the day picking up rubbish at Chesil Cove yesterday.

Although the beach has been cleaned by volunteers many times since the storms that hit the Dorset coast at the beginning of the year, more rubbish has been washed up and the students and staff said they couldn’t believe how much rubbish there was on the beach.

The team started at 10am and by lunch time had collected around 50 bags of rubbish, including toothbrushes, straws, plastic bottles, DIY materials and even babies’ dummies.

The Raw Foundation’s mission is to raise awareness about the environment and the impact of current methods of production, consumption and disposal of material goods like plastics.

Melinda Watson from Raw said the beach clean had gone really well and the students had been fantastic.

She said: “We have been doing it for three years. This beach was cleaned about two weeks ago and we probably cleared about half of it.”

She added she had never seen so much rubbish on the beach, adding: “It’s worse than ever.”

The volunteers found a big plastic drum with barnacles on it that only live in the north Atlantic which had been washed up on the beach.

Nicky Porter, the head of foundation studies and outdoor adventure and sports coaching, said ten staff and 60 students from the foundation studies, army preparation course and uniformed services course spent the day from 10am to 3pm picking litter from the beach.

She said it was the culmination of a work project the Foundation Studies students had been doing concerned with recycling and environmental awareness and it was great the army and public services students could join them.

She said: “It’s about volunteering, community working, environmental awareness, working together – all of these kinds of things.”

She said that the students had worked extremely hard, adding: “They are superb. When we got down here we couldn’t believe the extent of the rubbish.”

She said: “You wouldn’t believe the amount of rubbish they have cleaned in such a short amount of time.”

The college thanked Quiddles Cafe, the Coastal Rangers and the Crown Estate for their support.