An environmentalist who has dedicated years to cleaning beaches has announced he is quitting as the planet is “losing the battle” against plastic.

Alan Cookson, 46, from the Welsh market town of Aberystwyth, claims to have cleaned more than 120 beaches and removed at least five tonnes of plastic from them.

However Mr Cookson, who volunteers with the charity, Surfers Against Sewage (SAS), has said that he is giving up his fight because he fears it is too late to save the oceans from plastic pollution.

The regional SAS representative for north Ceredigion told the BBC that it “breaks his heart” to step down after four years with the charity.

"The reasons are many: we're losing, or we've lost," the father-of-three said. "When I started it was estimated that 8,000 tonnes of plastic entered the oceans every year and there was 5.5 trillion pieces of plastic polluting them.