A beach cleaner in Ayrshire has been left “disgusted” after he found hundreds of bags full of dog poo strewn around a local beach.
Stuart Dixon, 61, tidies up Troon beach as part of local clean up crew Friends of Troon Beaches.
The group has been cleaning the beach for around seven years, and Mr Dixon was just out and about tidying up litter when he made the discovery.
“I came across them, just strewn about, and once I got to counting them, there were around 428 of them,” he told STV News.
“It was a disgusting job – some were in a painter’s bucket which may have washed up on the beach, and the ones at the bottom had all been squashed down in essence like a cake.
“We filled up around five of the council issue bags with the red dog poo bags.”
The group has seen this type of littering before, with around 200 bags being found in the same spot in 2019.
“It stopped for a few years after that, so we thought it was finally over, but they obviously just continued and we never saw them,” Mr Dixon said.
“The second round of bags we’ve just found could be three years of constant delivery of a poo bag a day.”
He believes that it is just one preparator since the bags have now been building up at a rate of one per day.
“We moved the bucket but the guilty party has just found it and put it back now, so we’re up to eight bags since it was all cleared up,” Mr Dixon said.
“I just struggle to fathom the mentality of someone who’s clearly picking it up, and then not binning it.
“It’s someone whose clearly just too darn lazy to walk down to the car park, where the bins are, and disposing of them appropriately there.”
The council is unable to put a bin directly on the beach, where the poo dumper has been operating, due to a lack of pathways for it to be emptied.
However, they hope to place a bin at the bottom of Crosby Road nearby, in an effort to curb the build-up of excrement.
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