‘You’ve got a local community that really cares about the coastline,” said Alice Laverty, reflecting on the huge army of volunteers who had taken to crisis-hit beaches in north-east England with passion and only the most basic tools. “They’ve all got a dustpan, a brush, a bucket, a kitchen sieve.”

On beaches from Cambois in Northumberland to Seaburn on Wearside, up to 2,000 dedicated volunteers have been painstakingly sifting through sand to find tiny, lentil-sized pellets of plastic.

The pellets, called nurdles, are being washed up on beaches after a ship collision on 19 July at the Port of Tyne, South Shields, led to a billion of them spilling into the water. Campaigners estimate there was up to 25 tonnes of them.