Hansard

I, too, congratulate Graeme Dey on securing this important debate. I also commend all my constituents throughout the Highlands and Islands who participated in this year’s national spring clean. The extent to which local residents across the Highlands and Islands got involved is demonstrated by the fact that there were around 40 spring clean sessions in Argyll and Bute alone, which involved 1,934 children and 591 adults.

Participants in the sessions included a wide variety of groups and individuals, including the staff at Loch Fyne Oysters at the head of Loch Fyne, who organised a beach clean-up early in April. Rumours that they found a pocket book that belonged to Gordon Brown are unconfirmed, although there was a mass of sweetie papers underneath where John Prescott had been sitting.

The spring clean sessions also involved school pupils from numerous schools, including Strachur, Kirn, Toward and Strone primaries and Dunoon grammar school. It is fantastic to see such a strong volunteering spirit. All of us would want that sense of community pride to be repeated in next year’s spring clean and, indeed, would ideally like it to become an effort that is repeated throughout the year.

I have been chairman of the Loch Awe Improvement Association since 1992. I remember the first clean-up that we had, in 1993, which was organised by our volunteer wardens. It resulted in more than 1,000 black bags of rubbish being filled from the banks of Loch Awe, which somewhat overwhelmed Argyll and Bute Council. I send a wish to the council that it should back up the efforts of volunteers to clean up areas of great beauty by providing litter bins free of charge. I take the opportunity to thank the retired schoolmaster at Eredine in Argyll, Donald Beckett, who has devoted so much of his own free time over many years to picking up litter left by others so that the public can enjoy the banks of Loch Awe.

All of us in the chamber support the aims of Keep Scotland Beautiful. Although clean-ups are vital in removing the presence of litter and improving the condition of our communities for local residents and tourists alike, all of us would also support tackling the scourge of littering itself, because prevention is better than cure. Keep Scotland Beautiful is to be commended for the work that it does in that regard in our schools and communities. Where adequate litter bins and receptacles are available, we should all back a zero tolerance approach to dropping litter. Councils could play a better part by providing more litter bins and emptying them more regularly.

In Inverness, Keep Scotland Beautiful is working in conjunction with Highland Council and the Inverness business improvement district to tackle the littering of cigarette butts on streets and pavements. As well as the visual blight, cigarette butts can become trapped between paving stones, can be washed into drains and can cause blockages, which in turn lead to flooding. They also leak toxins that contaminate water and can harm marine life. Many smokers believe that butts are biodegradable, but due to their plastic content they can in fact take 10 to 12 years to degrade.

Highland Council is also to be congratulated on the campaign that it is running to prevent people from dropping their used chewing gum on the streets.

I make a plea to yachtsmen off the coast of the Scottish mainland and the islands not to throw their plastic rubbish over the side. It all gets washed up on beaches—especially in the Clyde estuary—and it is a blight on the beautiful scenery and a danger to wildlife.

The Scottish Conservatives are happy to support Graeme Dey’s motion and the work that Keep Scotland Beautiful is doing across the country. We hope that the spring clean 2013 will be an even greater success and will encourage local groups, schools and individuals to become involved in taking practical action that can make our localities more attractive and better for residents and the tourists who come to our country.

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