We need your help now
Support from readers like you keeps The Journal open.
You are visiting us because we have something you value. Independent, unbiased news that tells the truth. Advertising revenue goes some way to support our mission, but this year it has not been enough.
If you've seen value in our reporting, please contribute what you can, so we can continue to produce accurate and meaningful journalism. For everyone who needs it.
Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
By continuing, you are indicating that you accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
A NATIONWIDE STUDY carried out by Irish Business Against Litter (IBAL) has found that the majority of beaches and harbours across Ireland are falling short of receiving ‘clean’ status.
While 40% of 32 coastal areas surveyed were deemed ‘clean to European norms’, there was a rise in areas branded ‘littered’. Cork Harbour at Blackrock Castle and White Bay in Cork, both ‘heavily littered’, were the worst areas surveyed.
Some areas have improved in recent years, the study found, but one in three have been branded as ‘littered’ or ‘heavily littered’.
For the study, beaches, harbours, rivers and their immediate environs were monitored by the Environmental Education Unit of An Taisce in June and July.
Among the clean beaches were Brittas Bay, Curracloe, Lahinch, Clogherhead, Portmarnock and Strandhill.
By contrast, Bundoran, Keel in Mayo and Salthill and Dogs Bay in Galway were littered.
The seafront in Bray was praised, as was Kilmore Quay and Dun Laoghaire, but Kinsale, Bantry and Castletownbere harbours all failed to make the grade.
“The story is a positive one in that we’ve seen a welcome rise in the number of clean beaches and harbours compared to our study of 2 years ago,” Conor Horgan of IBAL said.
“However, at the bottom end of the table, we’ve seen many areas deteriorate from ‘moderately littered’ to ‘littered’,” he added.
According to the An Taisce report, Cork Harbour at Blackrock Castle “was heavily littered with marine litter and cans from outdoor drinking, coffee cups and plastic packaging”.
Previously among the cleanest beaches surveyed, this time Salthill was subject to “overflowing litter bins and substantial fast-food / food-related litter on top of and at the base of street bins”.
Along the beach the main items were coffee cups, fast-food litter and sweet wrappers, along with several clothing items, plastic toys and food utensils.”
The study found that the most common forms of litter found were cigarette butts, sweet wrappers, disposable masks and plastic bottles, with coffee cups also featuring strongly.
“The majority of these litter item are plastics, whose impact on the marine environment is a source of global concern,” said Horgan.
“Cigarette butts, for example, may appear harmless, but they are in effect a single-use plastic which poses a real danger to our sea life.” Research shows a single butt can contaminate up to 200 litres of water.
“We all need to realise that the implications of litter along our coasts go beyond tourism and recreation. It presents an existential threat to our planet and way of life.”
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
The amount of litter everywhere is awful. We saw a guy in a car, with kids in the back, throw rubbish our his window at the weekend. What chance do we have when this is what kids see?
@Elaine Phelan: I was driving behind a lorry in Cork a while back. First of all the left overs of a burger was tossed out the drivers window. Next came the wrapping and finally the drinks container. He didn’t have the manners to bag it all and dispose of it at his next stop.
@David Corrigan: any chance you got this on a dash cam which would have gotten the reg no? If so report it to the council who will post out an on the spot fine to the registered owner.
@Brendan Cooney: Unfortunately I don’t have a dash cam Brendan. I couldn’t believe that people would do that kind of thing. Even worse, when they know there are drivers behind them. Shocking carry on.
Buy EV for 100k and everything will become green and clean!!!!
Apart from the fact that the EV batteries will pollute environment more than euro7 diesels.
@Larsen Cib: The beaches are littered with wipes, bottles, ear buds etc, I’ve yet to see one littered with Tesla’s.
@Larsen Cib: not true. More #fakenews
@Alan Biddulph: then go enlighten yourself on how lithium-oin batteries are being utilised before arguing with me.
@Brendan Cooney: i wont waste time arguing with a person that has no idea what he is talking about. i would strongly suggest you as well getting the actual information on the EV battery utilisation
,break pad pollution and euro7 diesel.
Have a nice day.
@Larsen Cib: Surprised you didn’t call the two lads trolls for not agreeing with you as is your modus operandi.
@Larsen Cib: Average price of new car in Ireland is €33k, new EVs can be bought for this average price. EV batteries last twice as long as the design life of the vehicle they are not single use like a tank of petrol or diesel. EVs use their brakes so little than Audi released their latest EV with rear drum brakes. EVs brake pads last well over 100,000km because EVs use regenerative braking which uses the electric motors to return recovered energy to the battery. Brake pad pollution from EVs is a fraction of same from ICE vehicles. Euro7 is yet another con from the lying cheating diesel industry. DPF regen is the dirty little secret of modern diesels as they vent to atmosphere twice as often as manufacturers pretend #dirtydiesel vents to atmosphere every 400km with no filtration whatsoever
@Gavin Tobin: Well said Gavin, I love when the likes of Larsen tell you to go educate yourself when he hasn’t a breeze.
He’s probably still driving around in his smelly diesel thinking he’s saving us all from lithium leprosy or whatever he’s talking about.
@Larsen Cib: The only misguided person here who clearly didn’t keep up is you:
Studies clearly show that while the production of lithium Ion batteries and the disposal is very wasteful, it falls well short of the pollution caused by equal long term usage of combustion engine cars.
In the near future we’ll see hydrogen fuel cell cars, less polluting again, but requires huge amounts of energy to create and the price will reflect this.
Hence many experts are in favour of public rather than individual transport as the fast majority of people don’t need it on a daily basis.
@Larsen Cib: The world is full of plastic products that didnt exist when i grew up eg. mobile phones, ipads, wrapping, bottles, and toys – I remember toys made from steel. A huge increase in plastic clothes too all kinds of poly acryl etc. Regardless of fuel use f cars all of these plastic products are derived from hydrocarbons by processing oil. We have seen large increases in energy use, no surprise as billions of mobile phones that did not exist before are charged daily.
@Larsen Cib: An interesting video regarding lithium salt mining in Bolivia from DW:
https://youtu.be/LZjiEggYglM
@Gavin Tobin: ah the notorious EV propaganda troII.
Lithium-ion batteries are being made from rare and limited resources like nickel, cobalt, aluminum, and manganese. Some of which are bwing mined i Africa by African children , but thats not the case OF COURSE who cares about the children exploitation? We care about our batteries. The problem starts where there are shortages of material to create the battery if EV’s market grows.
And if it grows and in 5-10 years when you are on 200k-300k km you will have to change your battery – 95% of which CAN NOT BE UTILISED , because there is no such technology to utilise them. It is going to be dumped and burned down which will create unimaginable damage to the environment.
And since you are so smart , then you should know by now that a dumped battery contain toxic chemicals – including lithium cobalt, copper, nickel and sulfuric acids!!!! AND SINCE THERE IS NO technology to utilize the lithium-ion batteries – these toxic chemicals will go into the soil and contaminate the groundwater, and we are not even considering the burning.
Get your facts straight and go learn some scientific facts before posting nonsense.
@Mark V: hydrogen fuel vehicles will be far less damaging than Electrical cars, that is for certain.
BY INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL OF CLEAN TRANSPORT(ICCT)
Cite:
In the conventional car industry, according to a study from the international council of clean transportation (ICCT), 99% of lead-acid batteries (the ones running in fossil fuel powered cars) are recycled in the US. This is not the case for the lithium-ion batteries that have a very specific mix of chemical components and little quantities of lithium, which doesn’t make them an appealing market opportunity. For instance, in the EU market, in 2011, only 5% of lithium was being collected and the rest was either incinerated or dumped in landfills (this specifically doesn’t make electric cars greener at all), as it was not justified by price or regulations to recover it by hydrometallurgical processes.
Nevertheless, the more batteries that are out there, since the electric cars market is growing, the more interesting it gets to try to figure out how to recycle them or recapture rare earth elements.
Please go research 1st.
@Damian Moylan: thanks for sharing , i will definitely take a look. EU EV propaganda makes people believe that all the resources are magically growing on a green trees. But only few actually research what is going on.
@Larsen Cib: This guy (engineer) presents a quite good comparison of EV’s. Interestingly the emmissions an EV produces during use depends on the method of electrcity generation. This is mapped in the U.S. Notably nuclear waste is not factored in and nuclear electricity is regarded as emmissions free.Emmissions are higher in states where coal fired power stations are still in use eg. Virginia, well worth a watch;
https://youtu.be/6RhtiPefVzM
@Larsen Cib: Yes, Li-ion batteries are an issue and solid state batteries are not there yet. The truth is 1. modern diesels are v low Co2 highly economical and ideal for longer rural distances 2. EVs have a role especially in dense areas like large cities where driven miles are low 3. Electricity availability/generation is an issue, in the future will probably be a mix of wind, gas (for when the wind dont blow). This MiT prof. thinks Liquid Metal Batteries might solve the electricity storage issue for intermittent electricity generation methods such as solar and wind. Quite a good video and discusses the issues too with Lithim-ion batteries and their unsuitability for electricity storage “on scale”,
https://youtu.be/ZRyo0Nr7CrY
@Larsen Cib: ehhhh no, ev battery’s can be recycled, melted down and used against and again or alternatively used as a domestic home battery storage at its end of life stage for the car, this is going to be a big thing in the not so distant future. If you’re going to talk shite, at least have some decent facts.
@Damian Moylan: good food for an evening thought, thanks for the links.
@Larsen Cib: because you don’t have any facts?
@Larsen Cib: The metal mined in Africa by kids is Cobalt. The biggest use of cobalt is in the desulphurisation of diesel, kerosene & petrol.
If you cared in any way for kids down mines in DRC you wouldn’t burn diesel and then also emit its poisonous exhaust gasses at toddler level in our cities & towns.
BTW current batteries used by Teslas delivered to Ireland use non toxic Lithium Iron Phosphate which also don’t use any cobalt.
EV batteries last 20+ years not 5 to 10.
Everything you are spouting is easily debunked big oil nonsense.
@Gavin Tobin: There are issues with lithium based batteries though. The White Gold doumentary is pretty good,
https://youtu.be/LZjiEggYglM
@Gavin Tobin: EV batteries wont last 20 years. Gruber Motor Company are quite busy regenerating Teslas, https://youtu.be/GcpPyBYRDcM
@Damian Moylan: My EV battery is 8 years old and has only degraded by 8%.
@Damian Moylan: Na it is not good. Low on hard facts, high on emotion and utterly lacking in any balance.
Evaporation of lithium from brine under a desert pales into insignificance when faced with the utter disaster the oil industry has already imposed like tar sands in Canada.
No crocodile tears from you on this one?
Single use plastics are destroying our planet. From the rivers to the seas to landfills. Coke and many of the the multinationals make billions every year from plastics. There should be a deposit scheme more cans and glass bottles. How much plastic goes for burning every year. Most of what we put in our recycling bins never gets recycled. We need to take a good look at ourselves.
We have the green party in power who have done nothing but rise taxes. There are some things we just can’t tax our way out of.
@Diarmuid O’Braonáin: Indeed a lot of stuff just gets mixed at the re-cycling centre. There is no system to re-cycle the product most in predominance – soft plastic. We had only ton cans and glass bottles when i grew up on a deposit scheme – and the drinks tasted better. Then the drinks companies got greedy and changed to single use plastic to reduce their production costs (drinks did not get cheaper). Without Government regulation plastic will continue to destroy the planet.
@Damian Moylan: answer some of the biggest plastics producers also happen to be some of the biggest oil producers.
“Top 10 Plastic Resin Producers” https://polymerdatabase.com/Polymer%20Brands/Plastic%20Manufacturers.html
@Diarmuid O’Braonáin: the problem starts with people buying the plastic wrapped stuff. No one forces anyone to do so but people are selfish expecting recycling to be better,taxes be better,the government to act faster JUST to acomodate our everlasting need for things things and more things. People justify anything as long as its wrapped up in a lie we telp ourselves. the pollution will noy stop until people stop buying shit they dont need for reasons they make up.Cause why would we be the problem,how is it our responsibility, china is the main polluter right so why should the irish suffer…oh god,we heard them all at this stage. The matter of fact is if you grew up appreciating the natural world,have wonderful memories of unpolluted seaside, mountain tracks without coke bottles then you understand what you are missing. Also,lots of debate about EV here today. The thing is, unless you are fully educated on the science behind it,you probably got second hand info on any of this. We are chasing the next solution to everything. As if solar and wind will solve the problem. As if they are made from no energy input and no material. Instead of becoming more energy efficient ourselves we rely on the production of billions of things that eventually will expiry and will end up a big rubbish pile. This whole choosing to look for any other solution but to change ourselves and be aware of our responsibility is soo outdated now, and hard to believe we as a species have still not learnt anything. We think we are bloody intelligent but looking at people arguing about which type of car is better is misses the point.
@GaMran: also,Portmarnock beach clean???? Maybe I care too much, but the rage I felt looking at the amount of rubbish left behind in the last while. Its just so sad that the place you want to escape to when you have a crappo day is basically as dirty as a pissy lane in dublin is so so soul destroying..
@GaMran: Very simplistic view to put the onus back on the people. This needs to be done at a govt level, Think about it. How many plastic bottles are littered all over the world that were produced by coke? Coke say its the peoples fault but the solution to the problem is simple. Go to the source and make coke use cans and glass with a deposit scheme so that these products make their way back to coke to recycle. The coke govt lobbyists do not want this to happen as its gonna hit their profits. Its all about the bottom line.
Supermarkets have a lot to answer for so do the multinationals. They use plastic and lots of it so they can make more money. If you have ever done a shop then the recycling bin is full. It cannot be avoided.
Then we also have the waste companies not actually putting in an effort in making people separate the waste. Like in other countries they have 7 or 8 different bins to segregate everything. In Ireland we have 2, maybe 3 if you live in the countryside.
My last rant is about Carboard. Amazon make a fortune and millions of trees are cut down every year to produce cardboard. There needs to be a better solution as this is not sustainable. How much of this cardboard is recycled and how much is burned? How much ends up in landfills. Think about coffee cups? How much ends up in landfills? No one seems to care and the green party’s policy seems to be to increase taxes, no innovative solutions.
@Diarmuid O’Braonáin: fair points there and I was not arguing with the above whatsoever. Just pointing out the simple fact that we all are responsible. If at least some of us would stop buying plastic bottled coke,Coca Cola wouldnt produce them.Theyd be forced to make a real fast change because their money is on the line. Every multi’s response to the public demanding change is a forced lie about their efforts to be better. What I was pointing out is that any of us can vote and change things with how we decide to spend our money. Yes,it be fantastic if we all call them out and tell these organisations to change. This will take a few years or decades -depending on how big of a deal it is. To them its not urgent.
But…my point is that I can change how much I spend on plastic,will I buy a new iPhone everytime one comes out,do we need 2 cars in a family,being concious about what I buy and spend my money on. It doesnt make me simplistic, just aware. I still live a very normal modern life,but I do believe in starting the change now,even if its on a micro scale I and you and all of us can start making small changes.. Not on years and decades.
@Diarmuid O’Braonáin: also regarding your comment about Amazon,again I agree with you. I think that the people in charge,have not been creative enough to ask these questions you have wrote above..the problems arent discussed enough,questions asked and solutions uncovered..
@GaMran: ah I know it’s very disheartening in fairness. There is so much we could do to make the world a better place but there is no urgency. People or governments. Some are trying but it’s a drop in the ocean compared to what needs to be done.
@Diarmuid O’Braonáin: yes,its hard to find the line between doing things right and living in constant anxiety. But its good to have the conversation going and also seeing that there are people who care;) whatever way we want to fix it. As long as we want to fix it.
I saw a chap throwing a babies nappy into the sea. I pulled him aside but he wasn’t having any of it. He tried to kick me so I left.
Sea Shepherd Ireland arrange beach cleans to try help alleviate some of the build up. Anyone can volunteer to help. The Facebook page is active and worth joining if you want to keep up to date.
The volunteer beach cleaners sh
They found the remains of a whale in courtown Harbour a bicycle whale
have your say