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Ireland’s Largest Coastal Clean-Up Returns This Week

7th May 2016
The Keep Northern Ireland Beautiful campaign launching Coca-Cola Clean Coasts Week The Keep Northern Ireland Beautiful campaign launching Coca-Cola Clean Coasts Week

#CleanCoasts - Almost 3,000 volunteers took to beaches around the country during Coca-Cola Clean Coasts Week 2015 to remove a staggering 10 tonnes of marine litter from the coastline.

With a target to remove a further 11 tonnes from beaches around the island of Ireland this year, Coca-Cola Clean Coast Week 2016 – which kicked off yesterday (Friday 6 May) and runs till next Sunday 15 May – is calling on volunteers across the island to once again get involved in the numerous coastal clean-ups and events taking place throughout the week.

Over 120 beach cleans are planned alongside more than 20 coastal celebration events across Ireland in celebration of the beautiful natural resource of the coastline and to raise awareness of the importance of keeping beaches clean from litter.

With the theme ‘Enjoy Your Beach, Enjoy Your Beach Clean’, the 2016 awareness week is run by the Environmental Education Unit of An Taisce in partnership with Coca-Cola and Keep Northern Ireland Beautiful.

The week sees range of fun and informative events with the aim of raising awareness of the importance of protecting our coastline. Coastal celebrations range from beach fitness activities that incorporate clean-ups, to a seal release in partnership with Seal Rescue Ireland at Curracloe Strand in Wexford, and talks on the role of marram grass planting in halting coastal erosion.

Other events include National #2MinuteBeachClean Day, the launch of Love Your Coast photography competition, and Beat the Microbead Day.

While all events throughout Coca-Cola Clean Coast Week 2016 are free, some are ticketed – visit www.cleancoasts.org for all the details.

Published in Coastal Notes
MacDara Conroy

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MacDara Conroy

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MacDara Conroy is a contributor covering all things on the water, from boating and wildlife to science and business

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Coastal Notes Coastal Notes covers a broad spectrum of stories, events and developments in which some can be quirky and local in nature, while other stories are of national importance and are on-going, but whatever they are about, they need to be told.

Stories can be diverse and they can be influential, albeit some are more subtle than others in nature, while other events can be immediately felt. No more so felt, is firstly to those living along the coastal rim and rural isolated communities. Here the impact poses is increased to those directly linked with the sea, where daily lives are made from earning an income ashore and within coastal waters.

The topics in Coastal Notes can also be about the rare finding of sea-life creatures, a historic shipwreck lost to the passage of time and which has yet many a secret to tell. A trawler's net caught hauling more than fish but cannon balls dating to the Napoleonic era.

Also focusing the attention of Coastal Notes, are the maritime museums which are of national importance to maintaining access and knowledge of historical exhibits for future generations.

Equally to keep an eye on the present day, with activities of existing and planned projects in the pipeline from the wind and wave renewables sector and those of the energy exploration industry.

In addition Coastal Notes has many more angles to cover, be it the weekend boat leisure user taking a sedate cruise off a long straight beach on the coast beach and making a friend with a feathered companion along the way.

In complete contrast is to those who harvest the sea, using small boats based in harbours where infrastructure and safety poses an issue, before they set off to ply their trade at the foot of our highest sea cliffs along the rugged wild western seaboard.

It's all there, as Coastal Notes tells the stories that are arguably as varied to the environment from which they came from and indeed which shape people's interaction with the surrounding environment that is the natural world and our relationship with the sea.