Beach clean with Scottish bloggers
Words by Susanne Arbuckle of Adventures Around Scotland.
Scotland’s wild coasts, rugged landscapes and ancient culture have inspired many to document its beauty in blogs, vlogs and over social media. However with the rise in plastic pollution, both in the environment and in the media, it was time to get local creators together and learn more about the issues for ourselves. The idea behind this event was to inspire those who are documenting Scotland to become aware of some of the environmental threats it is facing, and to raise further awareness through the content created in response.
We gathered in the morning at the DoubleTree by Hilton Queensferry Crossing to hear more about the various environmental issues impacting our waters and coastline. We heard from various experts including Catherine Gemmell from the Marine Conservation Society, Alasdair Neilson from Fidra and Robbie Blyth from the Fife Coast and Countryside Trust.
The talks focused on marine litter, plastic pollution, nurdles and the steps we can all take to help address the problem. I’ve had so much great feedback about the issues discussed and everyone agrees they now have a far better understanding of the many problems our marine environment is facing.
During the beach clean we collected over 1200 pieces of litter and it is safe to say everyone was shocked by the amount of nurdles and plastic cotton bud sticks we came across.
This really helped everyone to appreciate the scale of the problem and it has already inspired many great creators including myself to sign up to the plastic challenge and #GoPlasticFree in July.
- 1,238 items
- 322 plastic cotton bud sticks
- Endless nurdles
The biggest culprits:
- Plastic/polystyrene (69.5%)
- Sanitary waste (27.3%)
“As well as bagging what we found it was important to record everything too”. - Love Exploring Scotland
Overall the event went even better than I hoped and an amazing amount of social media content was created on the day to raise awareness of the various issues to a wide audience, with more blogs and vlogs to come. The comments from everyone that attended have been extremely positive and there already seems to be an interest in running more events like this which is amazing!
To follow some of the amazing content creators for a full recap on the days work and for all your plastic free tips and tricks!
Some blogs:
Some vlogs:
… and some plastic free Instagrammers:
Two Scots Abroad - tune in for Trash Talk Tuesdays
Now it’s your turn to sign up to the Plastic Challenge and #GOplasticfree this July.
Click the image.