Sea Scouts scoop award for their beach cleaning efforts
BRAY SEA SCOUTS won the Eco Group award at last week’s Outsider Awards in the Sugar Club.
The Dublin venue was packed to the rafters for the awards ceremony, with mountaineers, open water swimmers, hikers, climber, mountain bikers and more gathered to celebrate the thriving outdoor scene in Ireland.
Nominees ranged in age from six to 94, and included everyone from giveit-a-go heroes to experienced athletes.
The Eco Group Award with Clean Coasts and Leave No Trace recognises communities that have made outstanding efforts in 2018 to improve their local environment. The award recognises that environmental efforts taken by the community can take on any form that has improved its region, including tidy towns efforts, area clean-ups, promotion of environmental messaging, adoption of environmental practices etc.
The young people of Bray Sea Scouts are making a positive impact on the environment, and learning how important it is to protect our coastlines.
Anita Oman Wrynn heads up the Wednesday night section of the Bray Sea Scouts and it seems her passion for the environment is rubbing off. From May to September the scouts conducted beach cleans along Bray Harbour and Harbour Beach either before, during or after their activities on the water.
The group signed up for Clean Coast Ireland and makes the weekly clean an official part of the Bray Sea Scout’s programme. The group also conducted larger beach cleans along the seafront.
And their passion didn’t stop there. Bray Sea Scouts also applied for a sponsorship to do conservation work with scouts from Slovakia, Greece, England and Malta in Malta. Here the group were educated on and worked on microplastics on the beaches.
In a bid to get other young people involved in beach cleans in Ireland, Bray Sea Scouts offered land-based scout troops a day on the water in return for doing a beach clean.
The Bray Sea Scouts have formed amazing new habits and will now reach for litter in the water without even thinking about it when they are out canoeing.