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The bags of rubbish collected at Banna Beach on Sunday.
OVER 30 bags of litter was collected by 40 volunteers in less than two hours at a Pre-Christmas clean-up on Banna beach on Sunday.
It was a fantastic turnout in the cold weather where many of the volunteers included lots of young children.
The beach, the car-park and approach road were blitzed in just one hour an over 30 bags of litter were collected, along with four lobster crates, a large section of fishing net and a massive piece of marine rope that needed to be hauled off by Banna Rescue’s launcher.
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The bags were filled with marine litter which included, fishing line, net and ropes and terrestrial litter mostly made up of plastic bottles, crisp and sweet wrappers, cigarette butts, plastic bags and glass bottles.
The volunteers who took part in the clean-up at Banna Beach on Sunday.
One volunteer was unfortunate to find that someone had gone to the effort of collecting their dog poo in a bag and then chuck it in the sand dunes, while another was unfortunate to find female hygiene products.
Rachel Geary of Banna Coastcare wished to thank everyone that turned up and gave up their Sunday afternoon. “It was another fantastic event, it is so heart-warming to see people come together to help combat the problem of marine litter, every piece of litter that is collected is a piece of litter that won’t pollute our oceans or harm our wildlife.”
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A large rope dumped at the beach.
She added; “Everybody made a fantastic effort, we all have a responsibility in caring for our coastline, our beaches are important places for numerous reasons so it’s great to give a little back so we can continue to enjoy them. Unfortunately, the litter we remove from the coast is not representative of the full load of marine litter in the environment. It is estimated that this only represents approximately 15%, the remainder is on the seabed and floating in the water column.
“All this litter has a huge impact on our environment, it can result in entanglement and ingestion by marine animals and ruin the appearance of our coastline. Sunday’s cleanup reduces these impacts, improves the appearance of our coastline and perhaps most importantly raises awareness with the younger generations!”
The cleanup on Banna was organised by Rachel Geary (Banna Coastcare). Team Bramble, Glan Tralee and Kerry Islamic Outreach Society were all represented. Banna Rescue supported the event by bringing their launcher down to the beach to collect all the full bags and drop them in the car-park.
Kerry County Council supported the event by removing all the bags collected. Clean Coasts Week is an initiative organised as part of An Taisce’s Clean Coasts Programme.
Cleaning up at Banna.
Some of the volunteers cleaning up at Banna.
