Valentine’s Day is a time to reflect and appreciate the relationships in our lives. However, it can also be a time to reflect on our relationship to things that may not be benefitting us or our environment. Such as single-use plastic.
Waterford-based Clean Coasts group Tramore Eco-Group have been tackling plastic pollution on their local beach for a number of years. Through their social media channels, the group has been trying to also raise awareness about the quantity of plastic found on our coast.
The group has been finding plastic bottles, wrappers and packaging, wipes, cigarette butts and plastic toys, including some retro rubbish that dates back to up to 20 years ago.
The aim of the group is to highlight how plastic never dies and can take hundreds of years to biodegrade.
These plastic items can harm marine life, as they can get entangled in plastic items or ingest them. As a group, reducing plastic has been top of their agenda for five years now.
“We contacted our Council and asked to have bins put in just for plastic bottles. We were given two that we placed at each end of the promenade here in Tramore and these are collected daily by our Council, and the bottles are sent for recycling. There was such interest in these bins the Council had more made for the Waterford Greenway and Waterford City.” said Ann Nolan, a representative of the group.
Join the campaign on social media @CleanCoasts and at www.cleancoasts.org.
