Would you switch your typical bucket and spade to reduce plastic waste?

The beach in Cromer. Picture: Mike Millman (Image: Archant)

During the height of summer hundreds of plastic buckets and spades and ring frisbees are left behind on our beaches by holidaymakers, causing beach clutter and harm to wildlife.

Shops in Cromer are thinking about the environmental impact of the products they sell more than ever before, with some ordering alternatives to the typical plastic bucket and spade.

Deb Lewis, box office marketing and retail manager at Cromer Pier's Pavilion Theatre, said: "We have started selling our own cups and are offering people a discount when they bring them back for a coffee, we have got rid of plastic straws and switched them for paper ones and we are already thinking ahead to next summer.

"We have decided to dip our toes in the water and buy some metal buckets and spades as an alternative for plastic ones.

Some of the seals along the Norfolk coast with their heads stuck in plastic rings. Picture: Friends of Horsey Seals (Image: Friends of Horsey Seals)

"The problem is when you buy metal buckets, they will understandably cost more than the plastic ones and I'm not 100pc people will be willing to invest in them.

"You can show people to water but it doesn't mean they will drink."

On Monday, this newspaper reported that shops in Gorleston and Hemsby had stopped selling frisbees over concerns of injuries to seals.

The Yacht Shop in Gorleston and the Rock Shop in Hemsby will no longer sell the hollow plastic discs, which can become embedded in a seal's neck and cause infection, after discussions with a local environmental group.

Seaside towns all over the country are looking into different ways of cutting down plastic pollution, but what is being done on our doorstep? Picture: Getty Images (Image: This content is subject to copyright.)

Gorleston Beach Clean approached the shops' owners, Jane and Alan Johnson, after seeing pictures of injured seals with rings stuck around their necks.

They then went on to buy the shop's stock of 255 plastic rings and persuaded them not to buy any more.A member of staff at Bargain World in Cromer said: "We have put up the posters in the window asking people to remember to take their plastic rings home to save the seals. As a company we are selling different ones that can't harm the wildlife".

Seaside towns all over the country are looking into different ways of cutting down plastic pollution, but what is being done on our doorstep? Picture: Matthew Usher. (Image: Archant Norfolk 2016)