Get on Board with a Beach Clean

September is a great time to get out to your local beach and get stuck into a beach clean! There are many organised events available to take part in.

Marine Conservation Society (MCS) is running the Great British Beach Clean from Friday 19th to Sunday 28th September. It's a nationwide, citizen science initiative for volunteers to organise and participate in beach clean-ups, collecting vital data on marine litter. To get involved, you can find and join a local beach clean-up or register to organise your own through the Marine Conservation Society website.

We also have Climate Week North East running from 20^th September to 5^th October, with Scotland’s Climate Weekhappening from 29^th September to 5^th October and there are a host of great event to take part in. Find the whole programme of events on their website.

The aquarium is pleased to be supporting the Great British Beach Clean with a clean at Tarlair beach, Macduff, at 10am 23rd September. You can find a list of other local beach cleans here. If you’re not one for organised events, that’s fine too. You can find ‘Take 4 for the Shore’ beach clean boxes at many local sites including Tarlair. These are boxes stocked with all the kit you would need to do your own beach clean at any time. There are gloves, bags, and litter pickers available for you to use and return. All you need to do is place the rubbish collected into the nearest bins. A full list of all the locations with Take 4 for the Shore boxes is available on their website (https://www.egcp.scot/take4).

While beach cleans are not the solution to plastic waste, they do make a difference to the amount of plastic entering our oceans. A recent study found that the vast majority (88%) of plastic in the ocean remains floating close to shore. This means our beaches take the brunt of the plastic problem. While this might be shocking and disheartening it does mean it’s accessible: we can remove the majority of the problem with ease and take large plastic items out of the marine environment before they break up into smaller bits that are harder to clean up. A study in Norway found that removing large plastic items from coastlines led to a 99.5% reduction in microplastics both on land and in water within a year. This suggests beach cleans make a real difference to the quantity of plastic that is entering food webs and thus play an important role in combating plastic pollution. So let’s all get our hands dirty (figuratively of course - you will have gloves) and join in to fight plastic pollution on our coastline!