Nearly £40,000 is to be spent in a bid to tackle the problem of marine litter on the Dumfries and Galloway coast.
The Solway Firth Partnership has received cash from the Scottish Government’s Marine Fund Scotland to go towards their Solway Marine Litter Project.
The £38,260.56 grant will help co-ordinate beach cleans and encourage community groups, hire skips and collect information about litter.
The partnership will work with the Machars and Cree Valley Climate Action Network on beach cleans in the west of Dumfries and Galloway.
Partnership manager Clair McFarlan said: “Because of the south westerly winds and currents of the Solway, litter tends to congregate in bays and rocky areas seen along the Rhins and Machars coastline.
“There are particular hot spots which can be hard to reach and when we get storm surges and bigger tides it can push litter further up and sometimes it can lie for years.
“Vegetation grows up around it and that creates its own problems.”
Marine litter includes items from landfill and untreated sewage as well as rubbish from marine industries.
The Solway Marine Litter Project will use data from the SCRAPbook scheme, which used aerial photography to show exactly where marine litter was along the coast, to target problem spots as part of a pilot programme.
The funding award was part of nearly £800,000 given out to fishing businesses and marine organisations from the Marine Scotland Fund.
