The popular beauty spot with an ugly problem

A village in Argyll has become a dumping ground for other people's rubbish.

Arrochar, on Scotland's west coast, is one of the country's most scenic locations. Tucked in at the head of Loch Long, with a group of mountains known as the Arrochar Alps nestling behind, it’s a beautiful setting and a popular destination for tourists.

But this beauty spot has an ugly problem because, as Landward highlights, other people's carelessness is having a drastic impact on the village.

An unsightly mess

The shores of Arrochar have the misfortune of acting as a 'marine litter sink'. This phenomenon occurs when the wind, tide and the spinning of the earth combine to send rubbish from the sea in a particular direction.

Cristina Startin despairs of the mess that blights her village.

“This is marine litter. It’s coming up off the Clyde," she explains. "Before it hits us it’s come from all over the world; we’ve done surveys and it literally comes from everywhere.”

The litter includes plastic water bottles, drinks cans and crisp packets; items casually discarded in towns and cities which end up in watercourses and then gravitate towards the marine litter sink. The rubbish gets tangled up with seaweed and piles on to Arrochar's beach, where it is unsightly, unhygienic and unpleasantly pungent.

Long-term effects

An ugly mess in a location heavily reliant on tourism creates an obvious problem but, as Cristina points out, there are other worrying side effects for wildlife and humans coming into contact with the waste.

"We’re in a sea loch so we’ve got porpoises, otters, seals coming up – we’ve even had whales. We’ve got I don’t know how many different types of birds here. They’re all getting this plastic inside their systems. The mussels and fish that are out there that we’re then catching and eating... what is that doing?"

The villagers hold beach clean-ups, while conservation charities and the Scottish Government have contributed efforts to clearing the litter away.

However, with 62,000 items washed up on the beach each year this is an on-going problem that could see this beauty spot being scarred by other people's rubbish for years to come.

For more on this story and the efforts underway to help Arrochar, watch Landward on BBC iPlayer.