Help rid our oceans of plastic
IT’S READY, steady, go for World Cleanup Day on September 15 and two huge events are ready to roll.
Two Oceans Aquarium is planning a Trash Bash clean-up campaign, while the Shoprite Group is once again staging clean-up events across Africa and urges everyone to do their part.
The World Cleanup Day initiative is open to anyone who wishes to join or organise a clean-up by logging on to the digital platform www. act for change. africa, developed by the Shoprite Group in partnership with volunteerism organisation Brownie Points. NGO,
Vlottenburg Community Organisation (VCO) in Wesbank, run by founder Hilton Davids – is proactively sustaining earnings through a recycling programme. Collected plastic, glass, paper and cardboard are sold to a local recycling company and all funds raised are used to support the projects run by Davids and his team.
Asked about earnings in the recycling business, Davids said: “Recycling is a challenging thing to do because you need to recycle in bulk to earn money because it (recycled material) is quite light. It is, however, not impossible to do and there is opportunity.”
Davids recruited 30 unemployed volunteers who assisted in collecting recyclable waste in exchange for food parcels sponsored by Shoprite.
The VCO clean-ups take place on the last Saturday of each month.
“The main project we are running is an after-school programme, following the large drop-out rate at a particular school.
“We give them guidance and help them with homework,” said Davids.
The Two Oceans Aquarium will be hosting its Trash Bash campaign on Sunset Beach, Blouberg from 10am to noon. The aquarium’s Trash Bash campaign highlights the significance of clean-ups and the need to entrench them as part of Capetonian culture.
The campaign will follow the “dirty zone” approach where attendees would work together in groups and record collected items, focusing on plastic shopping bags, ear bud sticks and sweet wrappers.
A scribe from each group will record the items collected.
At the end of the clean-up, all data of items collected will be collated and used to investigate the different types of marine litter polluting our waters.
Anyone who wishes to attend the clean-up is reminded to bring along a reusable water bottle as well as reusable gloves, a bucket to place the collected items in, sunscreen and a hat.