Charitable Aims:

1. To highlight the issue of marine litter, both locally and nationally, to both residents of, and visitors to, the area of Skye & Lochalsh, through social media, news media and events on the ground.

2. To organise beach cleaning exercises and support other local community groups in doing so throughout the area in order remove marine litter from the environment.

3. Encourage, promote and support wherever possible the re-use, recycling and responsible disposal of marine litter.

4. Identify potential sources of funding to facilitate these activities, make appropriate applications and initiate, establish and monitor projects to achieve these aims.

5. To collect marine litter survey data in conjunction with local and national organisations in support of national research and knowledge, with the objective of influencing future regulation to prevent wherever possible the release of this at source, and where this is not feasible, to ensure timely removal of it by both volunteer community and commercial organisations.

Skye Beach Cleans evolved from a small group of like-minded Skye residents around 2017/18. We were all very concerned about the huge amounts of marine litter on the island’s beaches, and learnt from each other how to organise beach cleans, arrange skips, etc. so we set up a mailbox and reached out to other environmental and community organisations around the area, offering to help support beach cleaning activities generally.

Around 2018, a beach cleaning boat was purchased (a RIB) with money largely raised from crowd funding, and over the next couple of years this was used to considerable effect removing debris off the more remote bits of coastline around the island. The arrival of Covid-19 saw an end to this, the departure from the island of the individuals directly responsible for its operation and maintenance, and ultimately the sale of the boat. Since then, the people involved have changed slightly, but in May 2021 we got back to beach cleaning, as well as installing beach clean stations in various part of the island. And we haven’t looked back! We now have a website, as well as presences on Facebook and Instagram. For several years now we have also been actively involved in the Marine Litter Working Group of the Scottish Islands Federation, an innovative shared interest group with members from all the Scottish islands from Arran to Shetland. We have also developed links with a number of other local, regional and national organisations.

This year (2025), Skye Beach Cleans became a registered charity (SC054213), with a board of six Trustees, covering the whole of Skye & Lochalsh. We hope to be able to consolidate our fund-raising efforts, support more communities in cleaning up their shorelines and facilitate more recycling, re-purposing and re-use of marine litter. We will also continue to survey our shore lines on a regular basis to increase the volume of data available to demonstrate the scale of the problem, and to influence future use of the marine environment.

Our current Trustees are listed here.

What the problem is:

Skye Beach Cleans were one of the earliest partners to get involved in marine litte surveys, and continue to carry out these on a regular basis. More than 15,000 volunteers completed over 1,200 litter surveys in 2024 for the Marine Conservation Society’s Beachwatch campaign, allowing MCS to identify common litter items, pollution sources and trends, and use this evidence to push for change. There was a real push by the Scottish Islands Federation in 2024, and as a result MCS saw a 16% increase in the number of surveys submitted from across the Scottish Islands in 2024, helping everyone better understand the types of litter impacting islands’ beaches. Fishing and aquaculture related litter made up 32% of all litter recorded on Scottish Islands, compared to only 12% of litter on mainland Scotland. (Read more here: Beachwatch 2024 Results | Marine Conservation Society) Most of what we remove from beaches is plastic – ranging from long lengths of black plastic feed pipe from fish farms, down to tiny scraps of rope and netting.

Unfortunately much of this has been around for so long that after years of settlement and vegetation growth some of it is embedded in the ground structure, and therefore is impossible to remove, but we remove as much as we can.

The source of some of it can easily be identified, e.g. the feed pipe, but much of it is generic marine industrial waste, rope, netting, etc. There are also always a significant number of plastic bottles and containers, with and without their lids. One of the more interesting finds are lobster tags – coloured plastic tags used to identify lobster creels in North America, which come complete with date, origin and registration numbers (for more info see here).

An identification list of frequently found items can be found here.

Where does it come from?

One great advantage of finding lobster and occasionally also fish tags is that they have very specific identification on them, so we know exactly where they have come from! Sadly this is not the case with the vast majority of items, some of which may have come from a terrestrial source, or been “lost” overboard from marine traffic. We now have a good knowledge of the type of marine industry where items have originated, but not their geographical location. However there is little doubt that although a small number of items, e.g lobster tags, have come across the Atlantic, Much of what we have to remove is far more local than that, especially when it comes to things like abandoned aquaculture sites (of which there are a surprising number).

What can we do about it?

In order to secure data on what is causing the problem, the first thing we do about it is count it! We do regular surveys, four times a year, on several sites in our area, and this standardised survey data is fed into the Scottish Islands Federation database, and on into the national Marine Conservation Society data. This way we can monitor what we are finding, how much and identify any trends or changes. This data is also used to demonstrate the problem and inform decision makers in government and elsewhere.

We organise a number of beach cleans throughout Skye & Lochalsh and support other community groups in organising their own, in order to remove as much debris as possible from the beaches and coastline. Originally, we just collected this us and dumped it into skips provided by The Highland Council, who then sent it all to landfill. These days, we try to re-use, recycle or re-purpose as much marine litter as we can, for example:-

• Plastic fish boxes can be used in horticulture, in poly tunnels, gardens, and tree nurseries.
• Creel fishing items, for example prawn trays and creel hooks (see ID Guide)can simply be re-used by fishermen.
• Trawl netting can be gathered up, bagged and shipped on pallets forrecycling.
• Hard plastic can be recycled and used to produce plant pots and handles (seeOcean Plastic Pots).
• All sorts of items can be used to create art work, mats and sculpture.