The Global Fight Against Litter

Spain’s coastline

Over 61 million tourists visit Spain each year, which contributes massively to the country’s economy. In fact, the country has the second largest income from tourism worldwide, and the largest in Europe.

Spain’s biggest attraction is its beautiful coastline, with people flocking to it for sun drenched beach holidays.

But marine and beach litter poses a big threat to tourism, as it threatens the natural beauty of the coastline, it harms wildlife, causes pollution, and is potentially harmful to health.

The main issues: marine litter and beach litter

Cadiz

The Catalonian coast in the North East of Spain is a popular tourist destination. In the Cádiz municipality, which has several tourist beaches, over 1 million euro is invested in the cleaning and maintenance of beaches. Urban and resort beaches are generally cleaned, though rural and remote beaches tend to be neglected.

What type of litter is discarded on the beaches?

Glass bottles, plastic bottles, bottle caps and lids

• Plastic, film, and foil wrappers
• hard/film plastic and foil wrappers
• Cigarette stubs
• Packaging materials
• Drinking straws
• Food cans

Hazardous litter

Some litter that is found on the coastline is hazardous and potentially damaging to health, and includes

• Glass fragments
• Wood with protruding nails
• Sanitary products
• Syringes

Prevention of beach litter

In an ideal world, litter could be prevented at source, but as many types of beach litter are washed up on the beach rather than discarded on it, there is little that can be done by those whose job it is to clean up the beaches.

Education and changing attitudes is key, and not always easy. However, in places where a ‘beach culture’ exists, litter does not tend to pose so much of a problem, as people have respect for the beaches.

There are fixed penalties for littering in most parts of Spain, however, they are often poorly implemented and not enforced.

Smoking is not banned in the beaches in Cadiz, but the municipality provides cones for the disposal of cigarettes next to sun loungers if people want to smoke.

What needs to happen?

As many beaches in Spain are popular all year round, they need to be cleaned more frequently.

More work is needed to identify where litter at its source, and to improve the cost effectiveness of beach cleaning and maintenance.

Marine litter initiatives

Raising Awareness

Fundación Ecomar is a successful organisation which provides children with education on sports, ecology, and healthy living.

It runs programmes in conjunction with PlasticsEurope, and they combine teaching children about the value of the marine environment, how to correctly deal with plastic waste and sailing lessons.

The scheme began in 2011, when they ran a successful workshop called “Taking care of the sea when sailing”, and it showed that children are conscious about marine litter, and of the need to recycle plastic. The children would then share their knowledge with family and friends which increased the value of the workshop.

In 2012, 40 Spanish sailing clubs were involved in the project, and the programme reached more than 7,500 children.

Highways England have launched a new campaign in the North West after litter picking teams collecting 40,000 sacks of litter from the side of the road which works out at 108 sacks per mile.  As you can imagine this works out a very expensive procedure for the councils, so what is being done?

New taxes are being considered in Wales, and the government are asking the public for their views and suggestions, one of the ideas is the deposit return scheme on plastic bottles, this is where you pay a slight deposit when you buy a plastic bottle and when recycled this deposit is refunded.  

Most of our stories this focus on beach litter, especially in 1 case where a 6 year old girl cut herself on a disposable bbq left by a beach goer.  

The festival season is well and truely underway, everyone has a blast but do they dispose of their items correctly or just leave everything lieing around for someone else to clear up?   Glastonbury for example is expected to cost upwards of £750,000 to just clean up.

Everyone should be proud of the neighbourhood, and litter should not be blighting childrens play areas and parks in your local community.  Keep Britain Tidy is one of the many organisations aimed at helping to keep Britain tidy and litter free, but everyone has a responsability to do their part.  

This week we look at salvaging supermarket seconds and what is being done to combat the insane amounts of food waste being generated

A brief insight into some of the headlines across the UK with the biggest headline regarding Bridgend Councils new recycling contractor missing residents waste collections

Germany has some of the strictest litter laws in the world, which obviously work as the German streets are almost immaculate.  In Germany they introduced a bottle deposit scheme as well as shopkeepers by law are required to keep the pavement outside of their shop clean.  

Chewing gum is one of the worst types of litter, resistant to a lot of removal methods and it does not degrade which then proves expensive when it can be removed.  In Ennis a chewing gum taskforce has been set up  which aims to educate about the problems of chewing gum litter, proving successful with now 6 out of 7 now saying they would dispose of the gum correctly.