KEEP Scotland Beautiful has launched an initiative aiming to make a difference at South Beach in Ayr.

Launched on Monday, July 16, the campaign, ‘My Beach, Your Beach’ is bidding to make improvements and protect the bathing water quality at three of Scotland’s beaches.

Through targeted interventions to raise awareness of the potential impact on water quality by dog fouling and encouraging gulls by feeding and leaving litter, the three beaches at South Beach in Ayr, Portobello Beach in Edinburgh and Fisherrow Sands in Musselburgh, have been selected to a trial after their bathing waters were rated as ‘poor’ by SEPA.

Nicola Turner, Community Projects Officer at Keep Scotland Beautiful, said: “Whilst visitor behaviour is only part of the solution, by bagging and binning dog poo, not feeding the gulls and taking our litter home, we can all be part of the solution and get cleaner water for us all to enjoy.

“The launch of our ‘My Beach, Your Beach’ campaign emphasises our shared responsibility, and we look forward to meeting lots more local beach users as the campaign period unfolds.”

Cllr Ian Cochrane, added: “We’re extremely proud of our beaches and work incredibly hard to ensure – as far as we can – that our bathing waters meet national standards.

"By being responsible and picking up after ourselves and our dogs and making sure that we feed our bins, not the gulls, we can help reduce the amount of dog and bird poo and litter that makes its way into our waters.

“That’s even easier this year thanks to new bins being put in place at our beaches. And, with tens of thousands of people flocking to our beaches during the summer, people power really can make a difference and allow us all to enjoy our stunning coastlines and My Beach, Your Beach.”

The pilot project covering the three beaches will trial a number of interventions, including bin wraps with campaign messages, signs around the beachfront raising awareness of the campaign and a series of community engagement events.