Weather warnings across the country disrupted this weekend’s Big Beach Clean as organisers reported a significant drop in the amount of litter collected from Ireland’s coastline and inland locations.
Clean Coasts, the body responsible for the event, says about 120 clean-up events organised for this weekend were cancelled or postponed to later this month. Across the weekend, volunteers removed an estimated 31.5 tonnes of litter across 300 locations. This figure is a drop of 50 per cent from the 63 tonnes collected last year.
However, organisers say they are “looking forward” to calculating the final impact of volunteer efforts “once all clean-ups will have taken place over the next few weeks.”
The Big Beach Clean is part of the International Coastal Cleanup (ICC) organised by the Ocean Conservancy. It is an annual event where volunteers clean popular bathing spots at the end of the summer period.
This year’s Big Beach Clean was part of Clean Coasts 20th anniversary celebrations. The weekend’s “flagship” event, scheduled for Co Cork on Friday, was cancelled due to an orange weather warning put in place in the county. The event will be rescheduled for a date to be announced.
In Co Clare, 300kg of marine litter was removed by volunteers at Whitestrand Beach, say organisers. In Co Donegal, volunteers from the Glengad Community Centre removed over 20 bags of rubbish from the local pier and beach.
In Dublin, over 14kg of litter was taken from the Shelley Banks Beach. In Sandycove, the local Tidy Towns group reported finding items left behind by swimmers such as socks, underwear and towels while broken plastic was found washed up on the shore.
Clean Coasts says that the next step for the volunteers is to record the category and quantity of litter collected. This will contribute “valuable data that will shape future campaigns and strategies aimed at preserving our oceans,” offering a “comprehensive overview of the marine litter problem,” say organisers.
This will also help initiate “targeted actions against the top litter offenders.” Clean Coasts cites the example of its Antismoking Litter campaign from 2022 which stemmed from cigarette buts being among the top three most frequently identified piece of litter during last year’s Beach Clean.
Clean Coasts says that the creation of new resources for the Break Up With Plastic campaign was also reliant on data collected from last year’s campaign.
The data collected from this campaign will also be shared with Ocean Conservancy to create reports and “advocate around the world to tackle ocean trash at a global scale,” says Clean Coasts.
