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.

Bantry, he said, was the only place in the country where a friendly co-operative effort among a range of organisations — including BIM, the county council, West Cork Leader, local residents’ groups, the mariculture industry, Bantry Bay Harbour Authority, the IFA, and the Bantry Bay Users Forum — was being organised to collect rubbish from the area’s beaches.

Mr O’Donovan pointed out that the level of mariculture waste — discarded ropes and fishing nets — was more serious than the household rubbish, making for up to 70% of the overall garbage to be collected.

“One of my main concerns is that some of these mariculture waste constitutes a safety hazard to boats in Bantry Bay as it gets caught up in the propellers.”

As part of the massive annual spring clean of the bay, the foreshore has been sectioned off into areas of responsibility for individual mussel companies. To qualify for BIM’s prestigious new eco-standard label, mussel companies must provide evidence of a waste management programme and avoid the use of plastic pergolari mesh. Local residents will work side-by-side with the mariculture industry as part of the overall effort in their area.

Grainne O’Mahony, of Cork County Council’s Environment and Recreation department, Western Division, said that the local authority would provide bags and gloves, adding that once the clean-up of a particular area had been carried out, it would collect and dispose of the rubbish.

The spring clean began for the first time last year. This was after a protest in 2006, when residents from shoreline areas brought garbage from the beaches and deposited it at the Harbour Office in order to highlight the problem.