A guest post by Mary Harris - The children of North Walls School show they care for their beach.

 

Thanks to the Pick Up 3 Pieces campaign, we now have a large bin for beach rubbish installed at The Ayre, a causeway near Longhope. On both sides of this road are very special bays, delightful in many ways with some interesting flora, fauna and geology. On the south side a stretch of glorious sand attracts both local and visiting folk, be they walkers, paddlers, seal watchers, fishermen or just beach lovers and in a certain light the sea sparkles in exquisite turquoise hues. Occasionally we are lucky enough to see orcas or basking sharks enter the bay.  Across the road on the other side is the more sheltered North Bay, rich in various shell fish and marine life, it is important to many birds including ducks, divers and waders.

 

The  south bay known as Aith Hope opens out into the Pentland Firth and unfortunately some of the rubbish that drifts about in the open seas can find its way onto our lovely beach. Winter storms also bring in seaweed and much of the rubbish ends up tangled amongst this tide line. Some of this bruck travels a long way, for instance I have found lobster cage tags from Maine, USA and milk cartons from Norway. Dedicated Bag the Bruckers annually clean up as much rubbish as they can but the problem is constant.

 

Part of the PU3P campaign is to visit local schools and discuss with the children sea life, tides,  drifting patterns and  the issues and problems associated with marine litter, especially plastics, on our natural environment. The children of North Walls School recently had a visit from Lesley Mackay, founder of PU3P. Teachers and assistants then organised a trip to the beach for the children so they could put into context what they have discussed at school.

 

It was great to meet them on the shore and help them with the task in hand. Their enthusiasm and interest is a credit to their teachers and Lesley. They scurried about picking up stuff from the tiniest pieces of string to a welly boot, shotgun cartridges, rope, net, half a pair of spectacles, bottles and other plastic detritus. Two young girls sat in one place for a long time and sorted with utmost care through the seaweed picking out every piece of plastic they could see. While other pupils charged about more randomly picking up whatever caught their eye. I heard a teacher encouraging them by giving them a challenge like 'find six blue things' or 'three round things'. I thought this a great idea as too much choice confused the issue and rather than run about not knowing where to start they had a point of focus. I watched two small lads make a gallant effort to raise a large lump of old iron, that has laid half buried in the sand for decades.

In no time at all they had filled up their bags and it was back to the bin, some children dragging long lengths of rope.   Before dumping it all in the bin the booty was examined and the children rightfully praised for their outstanding effort. Co-incidentally it happened that it was bin day and the lorry turned up just at the right time. So they were able to watch the bin being hoisted up and the rubbish safely dumped inside the truck. I think for one or two children this was the icing on the cake!

So it is a step forward for our community to have this prominently placed bin with eye catching sticker. We hope it will stimulate future beach goers to follow the example our school children magnificently set and to pick up some rubbish and dispose of it in the bin.

 

Well done and thank you children, we are very proud of you all.

Marine Litter Machine

 

Lots of good ideas for how to get litter out of our oceans in this class competition!

Guest post by the Eday Ranger - Jenny Campbell

 

I moved to Orkney 18 months ago to take up the Eday Ranger position, of course I’d always been concerned about marine pollution and pollution in general but it wasn’t until I lived up here that I became quite so passionate (or should I say militant) about it.  I think it’s the sheer amount you see up here, every tide line on every beach is strewn with all kinds of plastic rubbish as the PU3P outreach to schools proves with their collection of plastic items collected from around Orkney.  Then discovering the fate of all these plastic items, to photo-degrade becoming smaller and smaller then being ingested by marine life.  That’s if birds and mammals haven’t become entangled or trapped in plastic items before they break down.  Obviously, we all know marine litter is not a good thing but I don’t think many people realise quite how dangerous it is so the PU3P campaign is a brilliant idea as it helps the physical state of the beaches but also makes people think about their plastic use and what happens to their rubbish when it’s thrown out – where’s out?  In terms of our planet, there is no out so we need a shift in thinking, as well being very good recyclers and re-users we also need to reduce the amount of plastic being manufactured, every new bit of plastic is just another bit that will never, ever disappear!

 

So it was time for Eday to get the PU3P treatment, after a visit to Glaitness Primary School with Lindsey from RSPB to watch Lesley in action and learn how to interpret to a younger audience and also borrow the collection of bruck to show the Eday children.  So first we had a chat about the marine environment, the fate of plastics and other rubbish, the sad stories associated with it but then to cheer us up again we talked about what we can do to help.  It seems such a daunting prospect but as we found out, if you do what you can, what more can anyone ask?  The more people that think this way, the bigger the movement will become.  We then had a go at identifying some of the marine litter PU3P had lent to us and the children loved it as we made it like a scavenger hunt with a tick list.  After all the items had been spotted we talked through a few of them explaining how they could endanger an animal or the effect it could have.  As usual, the Eday children were very interested and concerned so we had a wee chat about our Bag the Bruck activity that will be coming up and they decided we should spread the word of PU3P to everyone we know!

 

This was followed by a ‘Rubbish Evening’ at Eday Heritage Centre, there was an illustrated presentation, similar to what the children had in the morning although with a few more sad photos of seals entangled in rope, whales in ghost-nets and birds killed through entanglement just to get the point across as I reckon we all need reminded sometimes.  This was followed by an excellent talk by RSPB Enjoy Wild Orkney’s Anne Bignall on all the amazing things that can be seen just below the surface of Orkney waters.  There was a quick break to refill glasses and order dinner then we gathered again to watch Raymond Besant’s short film, ‘The Flying Dustbin’ which tells the story of how plastic pollution affects fulmars, in a graphic yet engaging way, again emphasising why we need to do something now.  It was getting late by the time we finished but there was still time for sausage, chips and Orkney Best.  This event attracted 35 adults in the evening and our entire school of six pupils took part in the morning, if everyone one of those people went to the beach once and picked up their three pieces we’d have 123 pieces less of litter on our beaches!  It all adds up so spread the word.

The next step for us is getting one of these fancy bins you’ll have seen popping up all over Orkney, partaking in Bag the Bruck in April and picking up 3 pieces all year long!

PU3P visit to Rousay

A few weeks ahead of Bag the Bruck, the children in Rousay are well aware of the litter that is in the ocean and the harm it can do.

 

 

They were surprised to find inhalers and toothbrushes, shoes and gloves, and lots of balloons in the bruck collected from the beach. How did it get there? Where did it come from?

 

 

Jim Toomey helped us think about how it got in the oceans in the first place and what we can do about it. If lots of us make these small changes we can make a big difference to the problem.