The amount of litter on beaches has fallen More than 6,000 pieces of litter have been removed from Northern Ireland's beaches by teams of volunteers. The figure is in the Beachwatch 2008 survey, published on Wednesday by the Marine Conservation Society. On average 940 items of litter were found per kilometre, less than the UK average of 2,195 and down on 2007. Ten beaches in Northern Ireland were surveyed and public litter, followed by fishing litter, were the most common types of rubbish. The national figure found that the amount of litter on the UK's beaches has more than doubled in the last 15 years. The 2008 survey recorded and removed some 385,659 items of rubbish including fishing nets, plastic bags, cigarette butts and cotton bud sticks from beaches across the UK. The average amount of rubbish found was 2,195 items per... [read full story]
