Swimming upstream to battle litter entering the sea

Targeting litter that comes from inland sources, travels via rivers and burns to the sea, becoming marine litter is something we have been working on since 2018 through our Upstream Battle® campaign.

Funded by the Scottish Government Marine Fund, as part of Scotland’s Marine Litter Strategy, we have published two reports highlighting our work during 2024/2025.

Summarising information collected by volunteers of more 8,000 items across 100 locations our second national citizen science report provides a unique insight to what litter is found along Scottish rivers and waterways, complementing and adding to the other datasets we and partners hold.  Once again food and drink litter were top in all but one survey – including primarily fragments of packaging, drinks cans and plastic bottles.  Working with volunteers has enabled us to gather data from 16 rivers across Scotland, providing valuable data at a local level, it has also supported our campaign work at a national and local level.

With 80% of marine litter coming from land, and as highlighted in our first citizen science report, we need to do more to tackle litter at source, before it makes its way to our waterways and coastal and marine environments. Our second report published this month, highlights the work we carried out in Irvine, North Ayrshire, where we worked in partnership with the local authority and community group Irvine Clean Up Crew to uncover more data on the local sources and types of litter, and how it was entering the River Irvine.  Using data collected we also carried out a number of activities – radio, billboard and digital advertising raised the profile of the issue while clean ups empowered people to take action and an engagement day at Rivergate Shopping Centre encouraged people to learn about the impact of litter on local waterways and inspire them to bin their waste.

Heather McLaughlin, our Campaigns Manager, said: “There are so many forthcoming policies on the table that will all play a part tackling the litter emergency we have in Scotland – from Deposit Return System to Extended Producer Responsibility for packaging, to a charge on single-use beverage cups – but there is still so much more we need to do to build data sets in and with communities, to kick start collaborative approaches to ensure we can turn the tide on litter entering our seas.   We know that creative, local interventions can make a difference, but we need to scale these up and support more action.   These are points we have made in our consultation response to the UK Marine Bill."

Jennifer Pless, Chair of Irvine Clean Up Crew commented, “We are grateful to Keep Scotland Beautiful for their support in highlighting the massive litter problem there is on the River Irvine. We continue to tackle the litter build ups we find along the riverbanks in Irvine, but it often feels like we are putting a sticking plaster on an arterial wound. We hope the data in this report will help bring these litter problems to the forefront of the council's mind and that we can continue to work in partnership with them and Keep Scotland Beautiful to keep educating people on the litter emergency and work on creating a solution for the River Irvine that prevents this plastic pollution floating out into the sea.”

Check out our reports and get in touch if you would like to work with us going forward to tackle source to sea litter as part of Upstream Battle.