Ullapool Sea Savers' beach cleaning effort rewarded with Community Initiative Award at Highland Third Sector Interface awards 2022
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A GROUP of young environmentalists from Wester Ross was recognised for the members' efforts in cleaning local beaches at a community award.
The Ullapool Sea Savers received the Community Initiative Award at the Highland Third Sector Interface awards 2022 for their remote beach cleans and beach clean uplifts.
The group, who have previously appeared on TV with Prince William and on Autumnwatch, have previously campaigned on a number of environmental and wildlife issues and worked on campaigns to reduce litter and clean up streets and beaches around Ullapool and the North West. They took over running the boat following the end of the Living Seas Project in Ullapool and use it to survey wildlife, take out people who can’t normally access the sea and boats, and to do remote beach cleans and pick-ups in places on the coast that are either hard to access or difficult to remove rubbish from by foot or car.
Janis Piggott, who runs the charity, said: “Fantastic to get out to an event like this and brilliant hearing about so many incredible, inspirational groups and individuals working around the Highlands. Thanks very much to everyone who made such a lovely event happen, everyone who has been busy cleaning remote beaches and to everyone who supports USS to do what we love.”
Cleans on the Summer Isles and the coast of Loch Broom, Coigach and Little Loch Broom have brought in hundreds of kilos of rubbish ranging from fishing and fish farm waste, tourist beach rubbish, shotgun cartridges washed down from hunting estate rivers, and even a cuddly toy believed to have washed over from North America on the Gulf Stream.
The USS have also teamed up with school in Norway trying to highlight that littering on one coast can take rubbish on far-away beaches – on the Scandinavian coast in this case.
Beach clean uplifts have been carried out thanks to their landing craft, Mada Chuain (Gaelic for Ocean Wolf, the name used for Orca).
