We had a brilliant beach clean as part of the Paddling Fim Festival with Highland Experiences Ltd. on the 6th of April and we wanted to share the results of our volunteer's hard work!
The weather brightened up and gave us a glorious sunny day, if a wee bit windy, for our 2-hour beach clean starting from Seaman's Hall and targeting the Central, East and West beaches.
A group of more than 20 intrepid volunteers took to the dunes and the beach to comb through the tidal mats of seaweed, poke in-between the rocks along the promenade and scramble through the gorse, broom and maram grass in the dunes to collect all kinds of rubbish - there was a mixture of litter dropped on the beach and litter that had drifted in on the tides.
As well as tidying up our beaches, we work really hard to ensure we recycle as much of our collected litter as possible - sometimes that can be quite difficult, especially when we pick up lots of things like dog poo bags and soiled food wrappers. Unfortunately, the majority of the rubbish heading to landfill from the beach clean is dog poo bags!
On the plus side, we were able to collect a wide range of recyclable materials - plastic, paper, glass, metal, wood and even a car tyre!
The scores on the doors for each recyclable material type were:
Glass - 8.2 kg (18 pounds)
Plastic - 5.1 kg (11 pounds)
Metal - 3.1 kg (7 pounds)
Paper - 200g (0.5 pounds)
Miscellaneous - 5.6 kg (12 pounds)
In total, that's 22.2 kg of recyclable materials collected and sorted over 2 hours on Nairn's beaches!
All the plastic collected will head up to the Green Hive Workshop to be scanned and then if useable, it will be processed and crafted into bespoke, artisan plastic products by our skilled volunteers.
We will be holding on to a car tyre and a boat fender to use in our Community Garden down at the Seaman's Hall and the metal will be recycled by our volunteer Joe in Forres. We had a great time recycling the glass in the bottle bank down on Harbour Street.
As well as the 22kg of recyclable materials, we also collected 21kg of litter that couldn't be sorted or recycled - these materials included dog poo bags, soiled food wrappers and soiled clothing left on the beach, but more prominently in the dunes.
Well done to our fantastic volunteer team - you did Nairn proud!
Whilst we are happy that we collected more recyclable litter than non-recyclable litter, we would like to aim for a scenario where our beaches are litter-free and clean!
After speaking to everyone who attended the beach cleaning on Saturday, we have agreed that the next beach we would like to clean up will be the Secret Beach on the way to Whiteness Head - we'll keep you posted on a date!