Barcelona cleans its beaches.

Barcelona city council has launched a comprehensive drive to improve the capitals beaches. A recycling awareness campaign, with posters featuring four comic strip super-heroes in the act of collecting and binning rubbish, will be run at all beaches, with slogans in Spanish, English and Catalan. The council has also set up a pilot project for recycling rubbish at the Nova Icria beach, with 48 bins at six different points for collecting paper, glass, plastic and normal rubbish. 50,000 free portable ashtrays will be handed out to prevent cigarette butts being left in the sand. In 2004 ten million butts were collected from local beaches. Beach bars now have to operate within strict environmental guidelines, with recycling of water and residues and the use of recyclable containers a priority. The number of public toilets on the beach will be doubled this year to make a total of 85, including 24 in the licensed beach bars. Last but not least, 80,000 cubic metres of clean sand is to be added to the beaches of Barceloneta.