A lively group of volunteers removed 11.5kg of rubbish from Avoca Beach on June 8, during a community clean-up organised by Plastic Free Avoca Beach for World Clean Up Day.
In one of thousands of events happening worldwide to celebrate World Ocean Day, volunteers cleaned-up Hunter Park, the foreshore and beach, with two kilograms of recyclable bottles and cans also among the haul.
They also collected coffee cups, sauce containers and plastic bottle tops from nearby takeaway venues and cafes and almost 1,500 pieces of soft plastic – largely food, ice cream and lolly wrappers.
Member for Robertson Gordon Reid and staffer Jesse Corda participated enthusiastically in the clean-up and helped sort and count the rubbish collected at the end.
“The resulting data will be uploaded to the National Marine Debris Database where it will help researchers understand and solve the problem of marine pollution,” a spokesperson said.
Reid was particularly struck by the number of cigarette butts collected by the volunteers, with more than 100 gathered in less than an hour.
“Plastic Free Avoca Beach does amazing work raising awareness of pollution in our environments and facilitating community clean-up events,” he said.
“I very much appreciated the opportunity to be a part of the clean-up.
“The team was able to remove several kilograms of rubbish from Avoca Beach.
“As a community we need to ensure we do the right thing by disposing of our rubbish responsibly.
“I look forward to working with Plastic Free Avoca Beach to reduce the rate of cigarette butts in our environment, which is the most littered item in NSW with an estimated 1.32 billion butts littered in NSW every year.”
Plastic Free Avoca Beach has been campaigning to get butt bins installed at Avoca Beach.
“In order to demonstrate the size of the problem, we installed six handmade butt bins along the foreshore during the Christmas school holidays,” spokesperson Janet Aitchison said.
“Over a six-week period more than 300 butts were deposited in the bins, along with a random collection of other items of rubbish.
“We shared this data with Central Coast Council in an attempt to persuade them to install dedicated butt bins, but they declined to do so.”
Follow Plastic Free Avoca Beach and World Ocean Day on Instagram and Facebook for updates on their events and campaigns.
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