This page is about Greener Orkney’s directly organised and delivered beach cleans. For information about how we support other community beach cleans in Orkney, click here. For information about our marine litter research programme, click here.
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About Greener Orkney beach cleans
Why are beach cleans important?
Marine litter and particularly plastic waste like rope fragments can be very harmful to animal life and its removal from Orkney’s beaches will have a positive impact on this serious problem.
What’s more, many beaches are a valuable public recreation space. Residents’ and visitors’ enjoyment of our beaches will be enhanced by a clean environment.
What we do
Greener Orkney organises a programme of regular beach cleans at sites across Mainland. From May to August we only clean specific areas to avoid disturbing nesting birds.
We communicate details of our beach cleaning events through this website and Greener Orkney’s social media. Everyone is welcome to participate and we hope we will see you at one of our beach cleans soon.
When and where are Greener Orkney’s beach cleans?
Greener Orkney’s beach cleans happen approximately monthly. Details of future beach clean events can always be found on Greener Orkney’s Events page.
For the latest information about the beach clean programme, or last-minute changes due to weather conditions, we recommend you check our Facebook page close to each date and before setting out, just in case. Information on our Facebook page is regularly updated by our volunteers.
Greener Orkney beach cleans – impact
Headline figures for our beach clean activities:
2021-2026 Beach clean statistics (Mainland) | 4,615kg of litter removed from beaches | 623 volunteer opportunities fulfilled |
NB – weight totals include some large items such as tyres, large nets, feeding pipes etc. but only where it has been practical to weigh them on site.
For a detailed breakdown of beach clean data, month by month, please click here for a spreadsheet.
From September 2024 to March 2025 we also undertook a programme of marine litter research (click here for our page about marine litter research) and beach cleaning in the North Isles. That project resulted in 1,591kg of litter being removed from beaches, with 176 volunteer opportunities fulfilled. Please click here for a spreadsheet containing the detailed data.
“Before” and “after” views – 42kg of mainly plastic waste removed.