New moon volunteers keep beaches clean
WITH barely a breeze in the air, beachgoers along the South Peninsula and Atlantic coasts rolled up their sleeves yesterday to pick up litter and clean our beaches.
People came out in their numbers, with up to 80 volunteers joining team Clean C on Hout Bay beach and 15 members joining The Beach Co-op group at Muizenberg for their monthly new moon clean-up at Surfers’ Corner.
While collecting waste, they enjoyed the salt-scented air while discovering life present in the shallow ocean beds.
“Today is significant, because we have been doing it for [the past] three years. We do it every new moon when the tide is low and this is our 38th new moon. We clean the rocky shore. There is so much life in those rock pools.
“I surf at Muizenberg and I was the marine programme manager for the World Wildlife Fund, so I got into assisting the environment – 70% of what we pick up is plastic and packaging,” said The Beach Co-op founder, Aaniyah Omardien.
Omardien explained that the clean-ups hope to raise awareness and to educate others on the enormous environmental impact our consumption habits have on the ocean, as single-use plastic washes up on to our shores daily.
Omardien said the collected litter is taken to a UCT lab where it is dried, weighed and logged. Team Clean C in Hout Bay managed to pick up 45 bags full of litter, which was separated for recycling purposes.
“We were quite surprised because the beach looked quite clean, but there was a high attendance so people managed to go into the dunes to collect waste. Last year, we started separating and cleaning things for recycling,” said Clean C director, Greg Player.
The Beach Co-op will be hosting a Trash Bash to collect litter, along with Two Oceans Aquarium, on Sunset Beach, Blouberg, on Wednesday March 21. For more info, visit their Facebook page.