Bag the Bruck 2024 – 60 organisations and 1,300 people helped clean Orkney’s beaches in April

Now that the month of April has come to an end we can look at what the folk in Orkney did to clean the islands and the results.

In total over 60 organisations completed a Collection Form and at least 1,300 people helped out. We had a great response from the Orkney schools with over 10 schools taking part and 1 nursery as well as many other youth groups. One school in particular stood out – Papdale where 430 children and 50 staff took place in the clean-ups. Many thanks to everyone who took part and in total well over 1,000 bags of bruck were collected.

So what did we find? One observation was that there were significant amounts of bruck found on the northern isles with big clean-ups organised on Westray and Sanday.

In terms of the top three items found – around a third of items were identified as fishing rope and the second most popular item was plastic pieces including bottles and caps. There were also a number of large aquaculture pipes identified.

Orkney Islands Council have been busy picking up the bruck and the aquaculture firms will be picking up the fishing items notified to us in the next few weeks.

An amazing job and thanks again to everyone who helped.

Bag the Bruck and Greener Orkney