In three days, volunteers managed to remove 1118kg of rubbish from a 1km stretch of beach.

 

The largest single item, a massive piece of rubber, which I helped get off the beach. It weighed a colossal 105.80kg !
Dad said a cargo ship sank on the West Coast near Gairloch and it was full of big bales of this rubber. There is lots on the beaches around Gairloch and a big bale on Balchladich beach. We think the lump we moved was from that ship too. There is another large lump still on the beach at Raffin.

Hello readers Website Fairy here giving HUGE thanks to Geoff – Finlay and Ella’s Dad for this end of year rubbish round up for all that they do throughout the year 🙂
What a phenomenal and Inspirational family The Pringles are 🙂

A wee summary of the family’s 2023 beach cleaning and litter picking efforts.

Firstly Ullapool.
Since breaking through the 1 tonne litter collected barrier at the beginning of August,
I have completed a further 54 Lochbroom Community Council sponsored beach cleans of the local Ullapool beaches (Campsite, Golf course, Shore Street and Am Pollan).
This has resulted in a further 595kg of plastic and rubbish being removed.

As of 15 December the year to date total stands at 133 Lochbroom Community Council beach cleans totalling 1593.4kg for approx. 200 man hours of effort.
The largest single plastic item removed off the beach this year weighed in at 123kg.

In March we took part in the annual Keep Scotland Beautiful Spring Clean campaign, tidying up the streets and verges around Ullapool village.
Over the 2 weeks with assistance from like-minded community volunteers 20 bags of rubbish were removed weighing 105.5kg.

Out with Ullapool as a family we also completed a further 19 large beach cleans this year resulting in the removal of 1564kg of plastic pollution,
concentrating mostly on Scouriemore and Balchladich with 738kg (80 bags) and 593kg removed respectively in 8 beach cleans this year.

Big shout out to those members of the Assynt community and Assynt Field Club who did a huge amount of work cleaning Balchladich this year, resulting in 3-4 tonnes coming off the beach.
So our overall total for the year to date to 15 December is 152 beach cleans / litter picks and 3157.4kg of plastic / rubbish removed.

To give you an idea of the scale of the problem, since starting to help clean Scouriemore beach in September 2021, we have completed 14 beach cleans there in 2 years and removed 423 feed bags of plastic pollution totalling 3557kg.

In 3 years cleaning at Balchladich we have completed 11 beach cleans and removed 2816kg of plastic pollution.
You can probably easily double those quantities if you take into account the work undertaken by other people in the Assynt community.

In May we had the pleasure of finally meeting up with the Caithness Beach Cleans legends Dorcas and Allan Sinclair as they assisted us with a clean at Badentarbet, as part of their West coast beach cleaning grand tour. Together we removed just over 100kg in an afternoon. Since starting their Facebook beach cleaning community group in March 2019 their members have removed over 51 tonnes from their local beaches, with almost 10 tonnes removed so far this year.

Since we started beach cleaning in 2020 we have removed 9.13 tonnes with 3.16 tonnes removed so far this year.
Amazing what can be achieved with a bit of effort and minimal money and equipment.

I have just recently set up a similar FB group for the West coast North West Highland Beach Cleans, covering Redpoint to Cape Wrath, so we can be more organised and support each other when tackling badly polluted beaches. It will hopefully help to monitor what is actually coming ashore over the whole region. All the data from these beach cleans is collated on a UK wide database by Plastic@bay.
Hopefully it can be used to highlight the issues (fishing litter, aquaculture, wet wipes, disposable vapes etc) and scale of the problems and help to push for Government action to find long-term solutions.

As ever many thanks to those that have provided equipment, bags, words of encouragement etc and especially to the Ullapool Harbour Trust staff for continued support, assistance and disposal of the larger items and weekly rubbish.

Particular thanks to Lochbroom Community Council for their continued financial support of the Ullapool beach cleans and all they do to make Ullapool a clean, attractive place to work, live and visit.
If anybody is keen to try beach cleaning we do have some spare equipment (litter pickers, gloves etc) which you are more than welcome to have for free.

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
If you make resolutions maybe add in one to pick up a few bits of litter each time you’re out for a walk or on a beach.
Every little bit removed helps and adds up to a big difference over the year.