Tackle Marine Litter as part of our Spring Clean 2019
It’s estimated that up to 12.7 million tonnes of plastic gets into the sea each and every year – that's a truck full of litter a minute. It's killing wildlife, threatening ecosystems and habitats, and is extremely difficult and expensive to clean up.
As part of our Spring Clean you can help prevent litter from getting into our seas. Find some ideas below of how to get involved.
Support Upstream Battle
Many initiatives that tackle marine litter are targeted at cleaning up our beaches or trying to remove litter from the sea once it's there. But, as 80% of all marine litter comes from land, we also need to face this problem upstream, where litter is washed into gutters, blown into streams or carelessly discarded. Worryingly, we are seeing a steady increase in the amount of land-based litter, which means there's a greater chance it'll end up in the sea.
We must stop this cycle of litter and prevent it from entering the sea in the first place. Organse a Clean Up along a stream, river, canal or tributary and prevent litter from getting into our seas.
Use SCRAPbook's interactive map
Launched in April 2018, SCRAPbook – Scottish Coastal Rubbish Aerial Photography is an innovative project, using aerial photographs taken from light aircraft, to create a map showing coastal litter and pollution hotspots around the coast of mainland Scotland.
The easy-to-use SCRAPbook map displays the worst affected areas we’ve photographed . The aim of the map is to encourage targeted beach cleaning efforts to the most polluted areas or to areas of coastline that are rarely, or never, cleaned.
