Rubbish clean-up rated a success

QUEENSLAND Country Bank staff have collected more than 7kg of rubbish along the banks of the Ross Creek as part of the Great Barrier Reef Clean-up.

Tangaroa Blue Foundation, through the ReefClean Project, put the call out for organisations and community groups to get involved with the fourth year of the annual Great Barrier Reef Clean-up.

CEO Aaron Newman said the company was always looking for ways to make the community more sustainable.

“Many of the communities we belong to are directly connected to the Reef, and as a participant of the United Nationals Global Compact, ReefClean provides us with an opportunity to take action to support the protection of our environment,” Mr Newman said.

Over the past three years, the annual Great Barrier Reef Clean-up has seen communities volunteer over 9,000 hours to remove just under 14 tonnes of debris from waterways and parklands surrounding the Great Barrier Reef.

Tangaroa Blue General Manager, Emily Larkin, said the support of organisations like Queensland Country Bank was invaluable.

“The general public and citizen scientists are crucial to ensuring the overall health of one of the most biologically diverse environments on this planet – the Great Barrier Reef,” Ms Larkin said.

“Our focus is on the prevention of marine debris, to do that we need to collect data from beach and waterway clean-ups to essentially back up our source reduction efforts and programs.

The data collected from the clean-up will be entered into the Australian Marine Debris Initiative’s (AMDI) national database which researchers and policymakers can use to help inform and reinforce their decisions around marine waste and plastics.