Almost 80 per cent of litter found on Northern Ireland's beaches last year was plastic.
A report from Keep Northern Ireland Beautiful has found that in 2019 marine litter surveyors recorded an average of 508 pieces of litter per 100 meters of beach, which equates to an estimated 3.3 million items of litter on the north's coastline at any one time.
Plastic made up 78 per cent of the litter, including many single use items such as drinks bottles, food wrappers and broken pieces of plastic.
There were also many short pieces of string and rope, which may have originated from fishing activity.
Surveys of beach litter are carried out four times a year by trained volunteers across 11 `reference' beaches around Northern Ireland’s coast.
Every reference beach is cleaned within two weeks of the survey by a range of volunteers.
In 2019, almost 600 volunteers got involved to help clean up the beaches, collecting more than 540 bags of litter from the 11 reference beaches alone.
Jamie Miller, Local Environmental Quality Manager for Keep Northern Ireland Beautiful, said: "The vast majority of litter on our beaches comes from single use plastics. Removing these items from beaches is a small step towards tackling a very large problem in our seas, which we are only just beginning to understand".
Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, the charity has urged people to recognise that using Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) comes with the responsibility of not just using it properly but also disposing of it in a way that doesn’t harm the environment and other members of the public.
