Headed to the beach this month? Chances are you’ll make a visit. A bracing swim, some fish and chips and a 99 are just the traditions to round out an Irish summer.
But there’s something else you could make part of your beach routine and that’s a two-minute beach clean. This practice can go a long way towards making our beaches better.
You’ll see all kinds of litter on a day at the beach. From food packaging and broken toys to discarded vapes and fishing and boating paraphernalia, marine litter comes from all sorts of land- and sea-based activities.
What we see on the beach is only part of the problem, according to Beaches.ie, an initiative of the Environmental Protection Agency.
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It is estimated that 15 per cent of marine litter ends up on the sand, 15 per cent floats in the water and 70 per cent rests on the seabed.
This stuff doesn’t just spoil the beauty of our beaches, it can harm marine life and their habitats too.
Plastic litter kills an estimated 100,000 marine mammals and turtles worldwide every year. This includes 30,000 seals and up to a million seabirds, who either get entangled in it or eat it, according to Beaches.ie.
In some areas, plastic accounts for 80 per cent of the litter and can remain in the marine environment for hundreds of years. That’s a day at the beach that isn’t getting forgotten any time soon.
Marine experts fear there could be more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050, measured by weight, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a UK-based charity working to end waste in the economy.
Initiatives such as the #2MinuteBeachClean, operated as part of An Taisce’s Clean Coasts programme and supported by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage and Heritage is one way we can help stop the tide of litter.
Spending just two minutes picking up the things we see at the beach can make a big difference.
Not only will it make the beach a nicer place to be, but every piece of litter removed is a piece of litter that won’t pollute our oceans or be ingested by marine life.
Taking just two minutes, each #2MinuteBeachClean is estimated to collect about 1-2kg of litter. If everybody in Ireland did a #2MinuteBeachClean per month, that would be more than 100,000 tonnes of litter removed from our ocean this year.
Blue Flag beaches have #2minutebeachclean stations with bags and litter pickers you can borrow to make it easier to help keep our beaches litter free.
You could do as some others are doing and take a photo of the litter and post it on social media (X or Instagram using the #2minutebeachclean) before putting the litter in the bin.
Search the #2minutebeachclean hashtag and you’ll find groups such as the Tomhaggard Clean Coasts group in Wexford, which removed 25 bags of waste at Carnsore in July. Their finds included a tyre and a lobster pot.
Some 10 volunteers from the Blackrock Clean Up in Cork group gathered 11 bags of litter on one of the hottest days of the year. Clean Coasts Ballynamona, also in Cork, brought pupils from four primary schools to Garrylucas Beach in June. They gathered litter and learned about the importance of keeping their local beaches clean.
Finds from two-minute beach cleaners include everything from a Die Hard DVD in Donabate to a Child of Prague statue, buried in the sand.
So next time you visit the beach, whether you are going for a swim or walking the dog, think about joining the growing movement of people who are reducing marine litter, two minutes at a time.
