Fighting The Plastic Tide
An aerial survey of Scotland is highlighting coastal pollution hotspots
FLYING low over dark, rugged cliffs and pale, sandy coves a cheerful yellow stands out – the unmistakable sign of gorse, that sturdy shrub which can bloom in almost any season.
But rounding a headland, a kaleidoscope of other colours comes into view, revealing the grim and growing year-round presence of plastic waste, with dozens of crates, barrels and other debris in greens, blues and reds strewn across the shoreline.
Shocking sights like this, in Dumfries and Galloway, have inspired a unique aerial photographic survey of the nation’s coast so that conservationists can develop an online map showing where the worst hotspots are.
As well as pinpointing key locations, the survey provides clear, visual information on the scale and type of waste in different places, which is helping communities to target beach clean-ups where they are most needed.
This is vital information, for at 9660km (6000 miles), Scotland’s shores account for around a 10th of Europe’s entire coastline.
This makes it a challenge to reach, both for surveys and clean-ups, especially given the often wild weather and remote terrain.
Images for the Scottish Coastal Rubbish Aerial Photography scheme, dubbed SCRAPBOOK, are being taken by volunteer pilots in the Sky Watch Civil Air Patrol, which is working with the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) in Scotland and the Moray Firth Partnership, a local environmental charity.
Sky Watch is also a charitable organisation, providing voluntary air support to safeguard communities and the environment. The pilots became aware of the amount of plastic waste on our shores when on flights to assist missing person searches, or provide erosion surveys and flood recording.
Sky Watch chairman and pilot Archie Liggat explains, “We would be doing searches for missing persons, taking pictures and looking out for what might be a body floating in the sea, and seeing quite a lot of litter in those photographs. It’s been becoming an increasingly common feature.”
The worst areas which pilots see are blighted by thousands of bits of plastic waste at “industrial levels”, he states bluntly, with rubbish often blown further inland by strong winds, spreading debris up hills beyond the shore.
And the true scale of the problem is likely to be far bigger than pilots can see from the sky, because the presence of larger pieces of litter suggests a serious amount of smaller pieces hidden from view under seaweed or buried in the sand as bigger waste items are broken up by wind and waves.
The need and desire to take action against the plastic tide is growing both nationally and globally, and this project has been further inspired by the latest government tourism campaign where 2020 has been designated Scotland’s Year of Coasts and Water.
Recent figures from the MCS in Scotland hint at the scale of the problem, with more than 58,000 pieces of litter collected from just over 100 Scottish beaches by volunteers in only four days in 2017.
Now the charity is using the new picture-led map to co-ordinate what it hopes will be the largest targeted series of beach clean-ups nationwide this year.
One such operation was took place at Ugie Beach in