Lanarkshire surges ahead in committing to tackle marine litter

North and South Lanarkshire communities have shown their support for our award-winning campaign on the River Clyde, Upstream Battle. People from a wide range of backgrounds attended a workshop we hosted with Scottish Water (who recently launched the Nature Calls campaign, calling for a ban on wipes containing plastic) on 16 March.

Countryside Rangers, schools, community groups, businesses and individuals from Lanarkshire came together to commit to helping improve the quality of our marine environments at the event, which focused on source to sea litter. They pledged to take action including joining a litter pick, topping up water bottles from the tap, doing litter surveys and encouraging others to join in.

Launched in response to the huge public and political concern around marine litter, over the last three years Upstream Battle has supported communities to raise awareness, gather evidence and inspire action in Glasgow and the Clyde Valley, including Lanarkshire.

Barry Fisher, our CEO,said, “We know that 80% of marine litter comes from land and that we need to tackle this problem upstream.  Our stats also highlight that 88% of people believe that litter is a problem nationally, while 70% believe it is an issue in their local area – this is unacceptable.

“For over 30 years we have taken action to reduce marine and coastal litter and played an important role in the development of Scotland’s first Marine Litter Strategy which was published in 2014, and the most recent Marine Litter Strategy consultation which ran until 22 March, and which we submitted a response to.”

“We were delighted to host this workshop as part of our series of joint events with Scottish Water. Our Upstream Battle campaign has been dealing with litter on the River Clyde since 2019. The support of everyone in Lanarkshire who came along and showed how much they care about this issue by making a real commitment to taking action, is inspiring and shows that together, we can make a real difference.”

Douglas Millican, Chief Executive of Scottish Water, said: “It was great to see the success of the first workshop of 2022 and the passion of each of the attendees was really encouraging.

“We were able to share some of the ways we’re helping communities tackle marine litter, to show how individuals and groups can commit to making positive changes. For example, to help reduce one of the most commonly littered items, plastic bottles, we’ve put Top up Tap in every local authority area, with 68 taps across Scotland. Through our Nature Calls campaign, we also ask everyone to bin their wipes and not flush them, to reduce the amount of sewage related debris littering waterways. We also encourage everyone to sign our petition calling for ban of wipes containing plastic.”

Find out how you can get involved in Upstream Battle across the Clyde Valley at https://www.keepscotlandbeautiful.org/upstream-battle – and join our Spring Clean campaign at https://www.keepscotlandbeautiful.org/springclean.

Find out more about Scottish Water's Nature Calls campaign and sign the petition.