A toilet seat, a broken café chair and shotgun cartridges were just some of the more unusual items found when over 30 volunteers — armed with gloves, rubbish bags and pickers — descended on Salthill last Saturday to clear its beaches of litter.

In total, 1,467 items of litter (366 more than last year), filling over 31 refuse bags, were collected on the three Salthill ‘Blue Flag Beaches’ and on Grattan beach in Galway’s second annual Marine Conservation Society’s Beachwatch event.

The top five most common litter items found on vigorous clean-up of the beaches were drinks cans, cigarette butts, rope, plastic bottles and other pieces of plastic.

According to…..