PETALING JAYA, May 14 — A Labrador Retriever named Molly has become a local “celebrity” at a seaside town in North Yorkshire, UK for picking up over 250,000 pieces of beach litter in two years.
Her owner Fliss Cater told Mirror UK that she trained Molly to find discarded items like plastic bottles, ropes, spades, buckets, toys, and shoes after seeing how much rubbish had been carelessly thrown away by beachgoers.
The trash-picking duo has been cleaning the coastline every day after Cater moved to the town of Scarborough in 2017.
Molly came into her life in December that same year and they have been inseparable since.
“She’s my best bud, we work together, live together, play together, she’s at my side literally all the time,” Cater said of Molly.
“I could probably fill a wheelie bin every week or two with what we collect.
“At one point my garage was probably 60 per cent filled with beach litter waiting to be distributed to local artists for use in artwork and sculptures.
“I also save any buckets, spades, and beach toys that can be reused and I let tourists borrow them for the day, so my shop also has a couple of hundred of these which takes up quite a bit of space.”
Cater is the owner of a bath and skincare boutique in Scarborough and shares her adventures with Molly via the Instagram account @beachdogsuk.
On any given day, Molly can sniff out various types of litter ranging from cigarette butts, coffee cups, balloons, price tags from beach toys, lighters, and food wrappers.
In one post from August 2019, Cater revealed that the four-legged environmentalist was able to retrieve a pair of matching sandals that had been discarded at different ends of the beach.
She also makes sure that her furry friend is constantly supervised during their excursions as broken glass and aluminium can shards may be lying around in the sand.
Molly’s beach-cleaning efforts have turned her into a local hero, with passersby often marvelling at the pooch as she zooms around picking up litter along the shore.
“We get stopped all the time by people who think it’s adorable that she’s cleaning. She gets so much attention and she loves it, she knows she’s a bit of a star.
“Unfortunately Molly can’t clean the beach on her own, but she’s trying. We want to get people involved or at least make them think twice before disposing of their litter so carelessly.”
Molly’s unrivalled enthusiasm does have some comical downsides as she cannot tell the difference between an empty plastic bottle and a full one.
This has led to some amusing situations where Molly returned to Cater with a full bottle, only for her owner to look up and find that there was a “confused person (across the beach) wondering why this dog has just stolen their drink.”
The 35-year-old entrepreneur said that once someone litters on the beach, it’s a race against the tide to pick it up before it gets washed out to sea where it can harm marine life.
As a business owner who relies on beach tourism, Cater said she felt responsible to create awareness about the dangers of littering and the threats it poses to the ecosystem.
