Beachgoers left around ten tonnes of rubbish on a Dublin beach during yesterdays’ sunshine.
Images from Burrow Beach in Sutton show the devastation left behind after thousands of people made their way to the seaside yesterday.
Locals told Newstalk the beach was in the worst state they had ever seen this morning.
Meanwhile, council workers sent to clean up the mess had to clear 49 large sacks of bottles and cans before they could even access the beach this morning.
Photographer Padraig O’Reilly was one of the first on the scene this morning and on Lunchtime Live, he described what he found.
“It’s a reoccurring problem on the beaches,” he said. “I know Portmarnock is similar this morning as well.”
“Monday was pretty bad, but this morning is the worst, I think, that anybody has ever seen.
“One of the council workers told me they had to clear 49 large sacks of bottles and cans before they could actually get past the entrance on to the beach – that’s before they got on to the beach; just at the entrance.”
Everybody on the Burrow Beach,Sutton,Dublin yesterday should know this is what it looked like this morning.Council workers say they’ve never seen the likes of it.Every type of glass/plastic bottles,soiled nappies,barbecues etc etc… pic.twitter.com/zT3fmCqsv5
— Padraig O'Reilly Photographer (@padraig_reilly) July 19, 2022
Mr O’Reilly said there was ‘a couple of thousand’ people on the 1.3km beach at around 4:40pm yesterday afternoon – with DARTs full crowds arriving every 15 minutes.
He said much of the rubbish that was left overnight will have been washed away by the tides.
“The main problem with the beach being so full of plastics and bottles this morning is, there was a good high tide this morning, around about 4:30am,” he said.
“That’s taken a lot of it out into the water which is obviously environmentally bad, but it is of more immediate danger to humans because that’s broken up now.
“The glass is broken, there are grates off barbecues and there are soiled nappies out floating around there.
“So, anybody that wants to get in with their kids, they can’t today. They really couldn’t get out on to that beach today – certainly not into the water.
Rubbish left on Burrow Beach in Dublin after yesterday’s hottest day of the year, 19-07-2022. Image: Padraig O’Reilly Photographer.Also on the show, local Councillor David Healy said County Council took ten tonnes of rubbish off the beach this morning.
“They normally start around 6am and aim to finish by 9am,” he said. “They started early, at about 5:30am, and didn’t finish until about 12:30pm.”
“The problem is very large numbers of people coming and being willing to carry packaging and so on down to the beach with them and not wanting to carry it away with them.
“That is not everybody, a lot of people are responsible, but there are sufficient numbers of people who think they can just either drop it on the beach or drop it beside an overflowing bin.”
Rubbish left on Burrow Beach in Dublin after yesterday’s hottest day of the year, 19-07-2022. Image: Padraig O’Reilly Photographer.He said the council can’t provide enough bins for that level of rubbish, insisting, “this is something that requires people to take individual responsibility.”
Cllr Healy expressed hope that the Deposit and Return Scheme will deal with some of the rubbish that gets let behind.
“That’s the plastic bottles and the cans, because there will be a financial incentive for people to take them back to get their deposits,” he said
“But that is really just a part of the rubbish we have seen down there today. A lot of food packaging containers and a lot of shopping bags people used to bring their picnics down with them and which they could easily have used to take their much lighter packaging with them.
“It really is depressing.”
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