Single-use grills are ‘the worst form of litter’, says the boss of Keep Britain Tidy, whose own young son was badly burned by one left on a beach. They’re also a terrible way to cook. Should shops stop selling them?
Toby Tyler can still hear his son William’s scream. “That will never, ever leave us,” he says, speaking on a video call from the family home in Stockport, Greater Manchester. “But we didn’t understand what had happened. We thought he’d stood on something that had gone into his foot. It was only when he got to us and we grabbed him that we could see his foot completely stripped – all the skin had gone.”
It was 2020, in a break between lockdowns, and the Tyler family – Toby and Claire, their kids Lily and William, who was nine at the time – had gone to the beach at Formby. “There was another family who’d brought a disposable barbecue which they’d used on the sand in the morning. The whole unit had cooled, so they had moved it because they were worried about the kids standing on it, mainly because it was sharp.” You know the type: foil tray full of charcoal, topped with a mesh grill.
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