Clean Coasts & Green Schools, An Taisce

Clean Coasts and Green-Schools are coordinated by An Taisce

Clean Coasts The Clean Coasts programme works with communities to help protect and care for Ireland’s waterways, coastline, seas, ocean and marine life. Clean Coasts create a tangible improvement of Ireland’s coastal environment by supporting over 2000 community groups to host beach clean-ups, facilitate marine litter surveys and complete a range of environmental focused activities in their region.

Through its growth and expansion, Clean Coasts also includes:

Green Coast Award Love Your Coast Photography Competition Clean Coasts Roadshow Clean Coasts Grants Scheme Corporate Volunteering Ocean Hero Awards

Several campaigns are also operated by Clean Coasts, such as Think Before You Flush and #2MinuteBeachClean.

Green-Schools Global Citizenship Marine Environment Green-Schools is the leading environmental education and management programme, and award scheme, for primary and secondary schools across the Republic of Ireland. The programme is coordinated in by An Taisce – the National Trust for Ireland, and is part of the international Eco-Schools network, which is coordinated by the Foundation for Environmental Education. The Global Citizenship Marine Environment module (“Marine theme”) of the Green-Schools programme aims to support schools to tackle sources of marine litter – primarily single use plastics – within their school and wider community, and to increase ocean literacy among young people and educators across Ireland. The Marine theme provides opportunities for students to learn about a variety of marine topics through hands-on engagement, teaching resources, competitions, workshops and specialised events. Participating schools follow the Seven Steps of the Green-Schools programme, whereby they set up a student-centric committee, conduct an environmental review, put an action plan in place, monitor and evaluate progress, inform and involve the whole school and wider community, and come up with a Green Code. Schools must work actively on the Global Citizenship Marine Environment theme, across two academic years, completing essential actions such as a clean-up, an action day and a litter awareness survey, before applying for the Green Flag award. Over 500 schools have been awarded the Green Flag for Global Citizenship Marine Environment since the theme’s inception in 2016.

Clean Coasts & Green Schools Programmes are proudly supported by the Government of Ireland.