Litter impacts on scenery and tourism on the Colombian north Caribbean coast

Abstract

This paper provides the location, scenery and litter evaluation of 35 Colombian Caribbean beaches (9 remote, 9 village, 14 urban and 3 resort). Four litter grades were found. A: excellent (5); B: good (8); C: fair (19) and D: poor (3). A Decision Value parameter (D), for scenery gave: Class I - extremely attractive/natural, D > 0.85, 6 sites; Class II - attractive/natural sites, D = 0.85 -0.65, 2 sites; Class III - mainly natural sites, few outstanding features, D = 0.65-0.4, 1 site; Class IV - mainly unattractive sites, D = 0.4 to zero, 6 sites; Class V - very unattractive sites, D = <0, 20 sites. Litter amounts placed most beaches into a poor scenic category and many scenic beaches could jump a grade by means of clean-ups. A graphic methodology highlighted beaches with contradictory results for litter/scenic grades. Tourists abhor littered beaches and clean-ups would improve scenery scores.