58km clean-up challenge for beach litter collectors

FIFTY-EIGHT kilometres of rubbish — everything from black bags of domestic garbage and disposable nappies to fishing nets, ropes and plastic cut-offs.

That is the challenge facing a team of about 200 people who from this week begin a six-week-long litter-collection campaign along 58km of Bantry Bay foreshore, stretching from Sheep’s Head to Ballylickey, Glengarriff and Bere Island.

“It’s an eyesore. People are throwing a lot of rubbish off piers and off cliffs and from private land into the sea. Before the pay-by-weight system came in the shoreline was reasonably clean and tidy, now it’s disgraceful. The pay-by-weight system clearly has a bearing on it — people are just dumping household waste into the sea,” said Alec O’Donovan, assistant harbour master in Bantry.