'Bible messages in bottle' in River Bann seem to have stopped, says north coast environmental group
An environmental group which appealed for an end to people dropping plastic bottles containing Bible verses into the River Bann appears to have had their prayers answered.
In January this year, we reported on how the north coast group Sea2It took to social media to appeal to whatever church was instigating the bottle drops to stop harming the environment.
They posted: “Would any of the Coleraine churches know who is dumping bible messages in plastic bottles into the River Bann at Coleraine on this industrial scale? Whatever your beliefs or reason you have to spread the word of God, this act is littering our beautiful river.
"Sea2it volunteers have been removing these bottles for years now and collected a shocking 670 of these bottles with messages in them in 2023. Unfortunately, again a fresh 2024 batch seems to have been released into the river over the new year.
"They are always downstream of the Old Town Bridge so the person(s) must be dumping them into the river around Dunnes Stores, the foot Bridge or Waterside area. Please can you stop doing this as it’s polluting our river and tying up 100s of hours of our volunteer time removing them when we could be tackling other immediate impacts on the river."
At the time, Causeway Coast and Glens Borough Council said it was unaware of “this littering in the River Bann”.
They added: "We would advise that anyone identified as having committed littering or illegal dumping offences will be dealt with by way of a fixed penalty notice of £200 or prosecution in the Magistrates Court, where the maximum fine on conviction is £2,500.”
But now it seems as if the bottle drops have stopped with Sea2It members reporting that they haven’t seen any new bottles in the last two months.
"There are still some of the older bottles in the river system and caught in the reed beds but there's definitely a substantial decrease in any new bottles," Andrew Bratton from Sea2it told BBC Northern Ireland.
"We can tell by the condition of bottles that they're older and the messages are faded.
"I think the message we put out earlier in the springtime has hit home and the people behind this have decided that it's not a good idea."