Clean-up blitz on Tennent Dr
Thirty-two lunch-hour litter pickers grabbed up 25 rubbish sacks of trash from Palmerston North’s Tennent Dr area on Tuesday.
From Anzac Park overlooking the Manawatu River to Mogine Hill past Massey University, the enthusiastic garbage collectors turned out in support of Keep New Zealand Beautiful Week.
The hour-long litter blitz was spearheaded by Fonterra packaging technologist Tom Carr and Heather Knox of the Palmy Dirty Thirty.
It included several city council staff who helped take some of the rubbish away.
Dubbed ‘Captain Planet’ for his clean up endeavours while walking to work along Summerhill Dr, Carr came armed with his own customised and illuminated garbage grabber, as well as a couple of dozen grabbers supplied by Fonterra for the other volunteers to use.
‘‘They make it easier on everybody’s backs,’’ he said.
‘‘The [collectors] who went up the hill past Massey didn’t get too far.
‘‘They picked up so much rubbish, they had to stop and bring their bags back,’’ Carr said.
Fonterra colleague Barry Mabey said he picked up cans, dumped nappies, a 41⁄2 litre oil container, plenty of fast-food wrappers and lots of cigarette butts.
Knox said she was surprised at the amount of rubbish.
‘‘Anzac Park, a scenic spot overlooking the city was littered with cigarette butts.
‘‘We gave up on the butts to focus on bigger things.’’
She said quite a bit of the Anzac Park rubbish was over the edge of the cliff and only needed a bit more wind or rain for it to end up in the river.
The clean-up week continues this Saturday between 2pm and 4pm with the Big Lagoon to Esplanade Litter Pick.
‘‘Tom and I will be dressing up as superheroes,’’ Knox said.
He extended the invitation for everyone else to come to the Hokowhitu Lagoon dressed as their favourite caped crusaders in a bragging rights competition to see who can collect the most rubbish.
Grabbers and gloves will again be provided by Fonterra.