Kererū Club hosts litter pick up event
38kg worth of landfill rubbish collected
Aclean-up day in Pirongia, as part of the Keep New Zealand Beautiful Clean-Up Week, was held last month at the Pirongia Community Centre on Crozier St.
Geoff Edwards was the one who put the idea out there when he saw the event advertised on Keep New Zealand Beautiful.
He wanted help with the organising and reached out to the community association for help.
That is when The Kererū Club heard about it and asked if they could organise it. The Kererū Club is a youth club that started from homeschool learning.
They were sponsored by Pirongia Lions, who gave Kererū Club a gift card to Pak’nSave Te Awamutu to fund the sausage sizzle, and also let them borrow their gazebo.
The Pirongia Community Association was another sponsor, letting them use the community centre for a base for free.
Waipā District council provided the group with rubbish bags and Ruth’s ReCreations donated all of the prizes that were handmade.
The event was in the Pirongia village and managed to complete a litter pick up on all central Pirongia, with only the outlying areas not done These are planned to be completed at a later date.
Thirty people came to the event, ranging from a 7-week-old baby to retirees.
There were also three members
from Kererūs who came and represented the club — Ruby Webb, Amy Webb and Addison Brears.
Ruby said, “The shopping process was very fun. We paid with the gift card that the Lions gave us. We bought chocolate, sausages, onions, and sauce. We had to buy the bread at FreshChoice Te Awamutu. I made brownies and we donated lollipops. The food was all free to anyone who walked around and picked up litter.”
Some of their funny moments was a family walking past their base who came up to Mike Brears and asked him how much the sausages were.
Being told they get a free sausage for walking around the block and picking up litter, they happily did that.
Another man on his way to work offered to pay $8 for two. That money was donated to Kererū Club.
In the end, Kererū Club members sorted out all of the rubbish into piles.
Some of the piles were aluminium cans, recycling, landfill, glass bottles, interesting things and masks.
There were 57 aluminium cans, 30 glass bottles, and 10 masks.
They got five full yellow rubbish bags full of litter for landfill, around 38 kilograms worth of landfill rubbish, and recycled what they could.
The winner of the heaviest bag and the most rubbish was Yorrick Webb, mostly collected off Pirongia Rd and the cemetery. His bag weighed just over 8kg.
Cherie and Nevel Kemp came second with a total of 6.6kg.
The best attitude award was a tie between all the kids that participated in the event.
The most interesting item prize went to Sian and Julie Beare, with a decapitated dinosaur toy.
Overall Kererū Club say it was a success.