Flotsam and Jetsam June 2019 Welcome to the and Bute Beach Forum quarterly e-bulletin. The Beach Forum is a project run by The GRAB Trust (as part of our Beaches and Marine Litter Project). Our main aim is to raise awareness of the impacts of and reduce beach and marine litter and to support communities to take action by cleaning beaches. We hope you will find our e-bulletin interesting. The bulletin is also available by post and on our website.

Thank you to all of our wonderful volunteers who have worked hard again this year to make our beaches beautiful.

Mid-Argyll &

Gigha & Drumlemble Schools have been working hard completing their MCS Surveys. Gigha Primary School undertook their 4th MCS Survey of Minister’s Beach. We noticed that this survey showed less public litter such as sweet wrappers and cigarettes. This may be because it was slightly earlier in the year so, apart from Easter, the tourist season had not fully begun. We did, however, see a larger proportion of fishing litter alt- hough in general substantially less litter was collected than in previous surveys. The P6 & 7’s also took part in ‘A Plastic World’ workshop and designed some fantastic litter collecting devices to be installed in oceans to collect existing litter. The work with The GRAB Trust is part of the schools wider sustainability and enterprise project supported by Fyne Homes Climate Challenge Fund Project. The Beaches & Marine Litter Project hopes to assist with family workshops run by the school in order to begin a community enterprise using their new 3D printer. It is hoped that the local commu- nity could collect plastics which can be re-used by the pro- ject and the items made would be sold to visitors.

Drumlemble Primary School is another school which has ‘adopted’ their lo- cal beach to collect vital data through MCS Surveys. Beach is a popular public beach attached to two golf courses and has fantastic views of the wild Atlantic Ocean. Given the locality, the beach often shows large amounts of litter from shipping and fishing but the pupils no- ticed that this was significantly less since new litter bags have been in- stalled by Laggan Community Trust and Machrihanish Golf Course. We had a look and could see that these have been well used and the public were collecting beach litter on a regular basis.

The project has also been out and about teaching on the beach. The pu- pils of Rhunahaorine Primary undertook their regular beach clean at Point Sands beach, a long stretch of sand sheltered by the island of Gigha. Following our previous clean to the south, this time we headed north towards Rhunahaorine Point. The children enthusiastically collected litter finding objects such as crates and rope which, using their engineering skills and teamwork, were made into sleighs in which to collect the litter. Everyone also worked hard, with the assistance of the teachers, to dig out buried items and plastics and after a bit of huffing and puff- ing and sand everywhere we did it! After lots of hard work we had a game of ‘Limpets’ before heading back to school.

We were invited by Dalintober Primary School’s Eco Committee to as- sist them with a beach clean. Not an easy task as many of the items were small but by the end it was much cleaner and pleasant for the local community to use. We did find a trolley that had been in the loch for some time and resembles a sea monster! Once they had removed the seaweed with determination the pupils manged to pull it up the beach and slipway to a safe place for the council to collect (we didn’t think Tesco would want this one back).

Inveraray Primary School’s younger pupils took us to visit their beach, a short walk from the school. We took it in turns to find and collect litter and found some interesting objects such as a huge length of fishing line which we all thought was seaweed, After a bit of investigating and untangling, we safety removed it. Well done! It was lovely to see the chil- dren so knowledgeable and enthusiastic about their marine environment, collecting and identifying crabs and telling me about the harm the litter we collected can do to these creatures.

Ardrishaig Primary invited the project along to deliver workshops to the school. After looking at the sources of marine litter, how it gets there, what harm it can do and discussing what we can do to help, the pupils made some fantastic Marine Monsters from their household and school recycling. I also want to say a huge thankyou to all the children for their wonderful thank you letters telling me what they had learned and also the lovely drawings.

For the end of term I was lucky enough to spend the day with Lochgil- phead Joint Campus Nursery. After the brilliant story ‘Iona and the Sea’ written by our very own Ben Appleby, we made the most colourful sea creatures from the nursery yoghurt pots and all manner of bits and pieces. There was possibly more on the children than the pots but it was great fun and they certainly went home little sea champions with the mes- sage for all their friends and families.

As some of you will know this is my final term of working with the Beach- es and Marine Litter Project as I move on to new horizons. I would like to thank you all for inviting me into your schools and community groups, but most of all I would like to thank the children, our next generation and the reason we all need to start making a change. Thank you for your enthusi- asm and passion which, along with lots of fun, has made working with you all so wonderful, you are all sea champions.

Andrea McShannon Education Officer BBC 2 Series-War on Plastic

Every minute of every day the equivalent of a garbage truck full of plastic is emptied into the world’s oceans. Thanks to other BBC series like Blue Planet and Drowning in Plastic, we’ve all seen the devastating effect this is having on our world’s wildlife.

In this new three-part series, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Anita Rani explore where this gigantic problem is coming from, and what we can all do to try and solve it. They will be chal- lenging big businesses to do more to reduce the plastic in their products, questioning the gov- ernment about what they are doing to address recycling and plastic production. Plus, they will be challenging an entire street in Bristol to try and significantly reduce the amount of single- use plastic in their homes in four months to discover how easy or difficult it is to make these kind of changes. Tune in to BBC2 to find out more.

Argyll & Bute Council Waste Strategy Consultation

Argyll and Bute Council has launched a consultation to ask its residents and businesses what they think about tackling waste throughout the area.

In January 2021, the Scottish Government will introduce a ban on Biodegradable Municipal Waste (BMW) going into landfill. Simply put, that means household waste that is biodegrada- ble, such as food, garden waste and cardboard, can no longer be disposed of in landfill. To complete the consultation, please go to http://bit.ly/2KkeF8K. You can also get a hard copy of the survey at your local Customer Service Point, or by emailing marketing@argyll- bute.gov.uk.

Lorn & Oban Re-use Initiative (LORI) Change of Hours

The new summer hours will be: Monday to Friday 9.00am—4.45pm We are now open Sundays! Saturday & Sunday 11.00am—4.00pm

The GRAB Trust is sorry to inform you that our Project Officer in Oban, Lorn & the Isles, Terry Donovan, recently suffered a stroke which was fatal. Terry was our local Beaches & Marine Litter Project Officer working with schools and local communities in the area. Terry also worked as a retail assistant attached to our furniture re-use shop-Lorn & Oban Re-use Initia- tive (LORI) - based at the Moleigh Recycling Site outside Oban. She was a lovely lady who was so enthusiastic about her job. She will be greatly missed by the staff and our condolenc- es are offered to her family at this sad time. GRAB Staff:

Graham Love (General Manager) [email protected] Tel: 01546 604420

Andrea McShannon (Beaches & Marine Litter Education Project Officer— Mid-Argyll & Kintyre) [email protected] Tel: 01586 555297

Ben Appleby (Beaches & Marine Litter Education Project Officer—Dunoon & Helensburgh) [email protected] Tel: 01369 708515

Jean Kennedy—Administrator [email protected] Tel: 01546 604227

Editorial submissions Submissions are welcome. Please send your news to [email protected]

All Project Workers are part-time so please note that they are not always available to answer all queries in regard to beaches & marine litter is- sues.

The Argyll and Bute Beach Forum The GRAB Trust c/o Argyll & Bute Council Kilmory Lochgilphead Argyll PA31 8RT Tel: 01546 604420 Web: grab.org.uk E-mail: [email protected]

Disclaimer Thanks for reading. Please note that all views expressed are not necessarily the views of The GRAB Trust or the Argyll and Bute Beach Forum. We hope that you have enjoyed our e-bulletin. We would like to hear from you and would appreciate any comments you may have about it.

The Argyll and Bute Beach Forum is supported by the following organisations: