French Fries Flood England Beach After Shipping Containers Spill

Thousands of plastic bags containing French fries have washed up on a beach in East Sussex, UK, after shipping containers spilled their contents into the sea.

The spill was reported near Eastbourne, where several containers carrying “food and packaging” came ashore earlier this week, the BBC reported. The debris is believed to be linked to containers that fell from cargo vessels during recent storms and rough weather conditions in the English Channel.

On Saturday, a local walking along Falling Sands, close to the Beachy Head cliffs, discovered the fries.

“I had to look twice,” Joel Bonnici told the BBC. “The beach looked like the Caribbean golden sands,” he added.

According to Bonnici, the fries were piled unusually high in some areas. “In some areas, the chips were two-and-a-half feet deep into the ground,” he said.

He said that while food items such as onions appeared on the shoreline earlier in the week, this incident was on an entirely different scale. “Nothing compares to this,” he said.

The Coastguard confirmed that three shipping containers washed up at Seaford in East Sussex on Tuesday. Another container was recovered off Littlehampton in West Sussex, and debris was also found near Beachy Head.

“An aircraft was sent to survey the area on Friday, and no further containers were spotted offshore,” a Coast Guard spokesperson said.

The Coastguard added that containers that washed up at Selsey, Eastbourne, Newhaven, Rustington, Rottingdean, and Beachy Head are being monitored.

Concerns have now moved to the plastic waste left behind after the fries spilled from their packaging. Bonnici said a call for volunteers has been posted on a local community Facebook page to help clear the beach.

“Removing the plastic bags is a priority,” he said.

He warned that the discarded bags pose a threat to marine life, including a small colony of seals that lives nearby.

“I scuba dive quite regularly, and I know what seals are like,” he said. “If they see the bags they will play with them or try and eat them.”