With less than two weeks to go before the current round £1 coin goes out of circulation media royalty Jennie Bond is urging people in Edinburgh to donate their old pounds to help Barnardo’s Scotland change the lives of Scotland’s most vulnerable children. Continue reading Jennie Bond asks Edinburgh shoppers: hunt out your old pound coins for charity
Thousands of lives have been saved since the Department for Transport (DfT) introduced the maximum legal drink drive limit 50 years ago this weekend (7th October 1967). Continue reading Drink drive law turns 50
A new two-stage right turn junction to help keep cyclists safe is being introduced on one of the city’s major roads – the first such junction of its kind in Scotland. This is due to ‘go live’ at McDonald Road at the end of this month as part of ongoing public realm and active travel improvements to Leith Walk. Continue reading Two-stage junction to improve Leith road safety
Police are seeking a man involved in three incidents over a ten minute period in Stockbridge on Friday morning. Two sexual assaults – including one on a woman pushing a child in a buggy – took place between 8.35 and 8.45 on North West Circus Place. Continue reading Police seek man following sexual assaults in Stockbridge
Having your head frozen for potential future resuscitation is a service that will be on offer to the public within 5-10 years, according to the UK’s stem cell bank …
Famously something Walt Disney did, having your head frozen when you die is thought to be a way of preserving enough of your personality, intellect and memories to be able to bring you fully back to life at some point in the future when technology is more advanced. Continue reading Head Freezing available ‘within a decade’
Fear of hostility could be stopping large numbers of disabled people in Scotland going out in their communities, says Leonard Cheshire Disability as it reveals the results of a UK national survey of disabled adults aged over 18. Continue reading Fear of hostility prevents one in three disabled people going out
The UK government has launched an unprecedented repatriation effort to return 110,000 passengers affected by the failure of Monarch. Continue reading Monarch collapse: UK Government launches international repatriation plan
Leading Scottish craft brewer, Stewart Brewing, is celebrating after winning three prizes at the second annual Scottish Beer Awards this week. Continue reading Success for Stewart Brewing at Scottish Beer Awards
The Westminster Government has not evaluated the impact of its welfare reforms on homelessness, or the impact of the mitigations that it has put in place, according to the National Audit Office. The National Audit Office, which scrutinises public spending for Parliament and is independent of government, is critical of the government’s welfare reforms and says a ‘light touch’ response to problems isn’t working. Continue reading Welfare reforms have fuelled homelessness, says Audit Office
Sunday 17th September 1.30 – 4pm
It’s the Great British Beach Clean (GBBC) this weekend (15 – 17 September) That’s the Marine Conservation Society’s (MCS) annual nationwide beach clean and data collection event which goes global once a year!
Wardie Bay Beachwatch is holding it’s seventh Beachwatch event of 2017 this Sunday (17th September) from 1.30 – 4pm and we want to see as many budding citizen scientists join in as possible!
Last year, in Scotland, 1,744 GBBC volunteers took part on 121 beaches around the coast. Overwhelmingly, the most found item was plastic. Plastic never goes away . It just breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces, known as microplastics.
MCS takes found evidence to Government, campaigning for effective legislation to better protect our marine and coastal environment.
Current campaigns include Don’t Current campaigns include ‘Don’t let go’ ,aimed at asking councils to ban the international release of balloons and lanterns; ‘Hang on to your Tackle‘, which aims to reduce litter from discarded fishing kit at popular angling site,h them and ‘Wet wipes turn nasty (when you flush them)’, calling for clearer labelling on non-degradable wipes that are clogging up our sewers and contaminating our beaches.
Furthermore, microplastics are an urgent issue globally. MCS has been successfully campaigning to ban the microbeads in all personal care products. Microplastics simply pass through filters in waste water treatment facilities, ending up as ocean pollution.
Nurdles are also a major hazard to marine and coastal life. The nurdle is the lentil-sized plastic pellet used to create all of our plastic products. Billions are manufactured each year and millions carelessly split in transit or at the factory, ending up again as marine pollution.
In Scotland, many campaigners have found a spike in nurdle numbers in the Firth of Forth. Last Friday (9th September), joined Fidra MCS and others to clean up a slick of pellets contaminating the Kinneil Nature Reserve which neighbours Grangemouth petrochemical plant.
Karen Bates, Wardie Bay Beachwatch volunteer and organiser, said: “It isn’t right that volunteers are here cleaning up after industry. How is it that there is so little accountability to stop pollution at source? Where it is clear that industry’s own backyard is polluted, why is the responsibility for clean-up not mandatory?
“If it was an oil spill they would certainly be made to compensate. More stringent legislation needs to be enforced to ensure zero loss of nurdles and microplastics into our environment. I want to see industry redesign entirely so fewer new pellets are manufactured from raw materials.
“We don’t need more single-use plastic from yet more fossil fuel. We need more responsible handling of our resources to stop threatening the balance of nature.”
Wardie Bay Beachwatch will welcome back Ben Macperson, MSP for Edinburgh Northern and Leith, to our event on Sunday. Ben’s invaluable support on the Have You Got the Bottle? campaign calling for a Deposit Return Scheme on drinks containers helped ensure it’s success.
Anna Lagerqvist Christopherson, owner of Boda Bars, a champion of the DRS campaign and regular volunteer at Wardie Bay, will also be joining us. Not prepared to wait for action, Anna brilliantly launched her own recycling rewreward scheme across all Boda Bars.
Then on September 5th, we were all delighted to hear Nicola Sturgeon’s announcement in her 2017-18 Programme for Government that a DRS would be implemented across Scotland, ahead of the rest of the UK.
MCS Beachwatch results are vital in turning the tide on litter. They have helped influence changes to laws on the disposing of waste at sea, and resulted in investment in better sewage treatment at the coast. Local volunteers at Wardie Bay have found on average 32.6% sewage related debris (SRD) at our Beachwatch events since March 2017, finding as much as 45.2% of the total waste collected on our first survey. The Great British Beach Clean results for 2016 showed the UK figure to average 7%! The Scottish average for SRD last year was 75 items per 100m of beach surveyed, with the UK average currently at 45 items per 100m.
Karen said: “Inspiring work is being done to encourage behaviour change and to promote the circular economy. We can all refuse, reduce, reuse and recycle and make sure we only put the 3Ps down the loo – but we need industry to step up before all life suffers further feedback.
“It’s been brilliant seeing all the volunteers prepared to make a difference at Wardie Bay over recent months, helping to spread the word on the need for better recycling and waste management. By acting locally, hopefully we can help to create change and then be part of that sea change on a national and even global scale.”
Anyone wanting to take part in the beach clean at Wardie Bay can find out more by contacting Karen Bates, emailwardiebaybeachwatch@gmail.com or you can sign up at: www.mcsuk.org/beachwatch/beach/wardie–bay/event/2017–09–17 .
You can also find us on facebook @WardieBayBeachwatch and twitter @wardiebaybeach
