This wonderful weather has certainly brought the crowds out, but its also brought out the very best in our local retailers who have stopped selling flying rings.

We are so pleased to have secured several major retailers and suppliers to support our campaign and a lot of that success has been down to you expressing your concern directly to them…. well done and thank you.

For example, The Works removed flying rings from its seaside stores in June 2024, and this major retailer of toys and gifts is supportive of the campaign launched by the UK Seal Alliance.

The Works is one of hundreds of national and smaller independent shops who are joining the movement and taking positive action to protect seals from the unnecessary and avoidable threat of flying rings by simply swapping to seal-safe toys such as solid discs.

 Gareth Richards, Vice Chair of UK Seal Alliance, explained: ‘We are deeply grateful to all those shops helping to protect our precious seals and reduce their needless suffering. We do not want retailers to lose out financially, quite the opposite in fact. Retailers are actually reporting an increase in the sale of solid disc frisbees since they stopped selling flying rings, so their profits are not affected. We are asking shops to consider non-plastic ones as preferable for the environment.’ 

Wendy Hill, Sales Representative for Palgrave Ltd a major supplier of beach toys, advises her company is keen to support the campaign.

Wendy said: ‘We have been distributing flyers to our customers to highlight the injury and dangers flying rings cause to our poor seals. As a result of this, our sale of these rings has slowed considerably and our customers are purchasing our alternative offering of solid flying discs. We are planning to phase the flying rings out completely in the future.’

Arran Active, a family run Scottish sports shop is one example of the huge number of smaller retailers supporting the campaign across the UK.

Richard Godfrey, Director, explained their change in product:

‘After seeing the campaign, we realised that we had a responsibility to make a positive change by removing all flying rings from sale and committing to never stock these again. A simple change with a huge impact!’

Shops who have swapped flying rings for seal-safe solid discs are proudly displaying the UK Seal Alliance Shop Poster.

David Rogers (pictured) of Kennextone Camping and Touring Park on Gower is just one example of many. 

Everyone can help seals by not buying, throwing or selling flying rings and by supporting our Campaign to get rid of these misery making items.

Public opinion is a very powerful and productive tool that’s why we want YOU to get involved and express your concerns to shop keepers who are still continuing to sell these flying rings.

We have created guidance for you to follow should you wish to approach a retailer together with a number of really useful resources available by visiting the Seal Alliance website. All these are free to use and created to help YOU get involved.

So, this is another snapshot of what has been happening, but there are still lots to do for example we need to keep accruing more signatures on our petition.

We also need YOU to write to your local Councillor using our template letter available as one of the resources I’ve already mentioned. It’s so easy to do and very effective in securing another Local Authority to ban them.

Finally, we need you to share our campaign to as many people as possible, so please use your social media accounts to do this.

Thanks once again for supporting your campaign and I’ll update you again in a couple of weeks.