I love the relaxed and rewarding feeling I get after cleaning up the beach, this is why  I happily volunteered for the St Kilda beach clean up Organized by the EcoCenter for a Christian community group. It was a family event and around 35 people showed up.  Beautiful families spending quality time doing something for their environment!
The activities took around two hours and after that they ate a delicious barbecue. If many Community groups organized outings like this we could prevent a lot of garbage from reaching the Ocean. We gathered a total of 18 of those whites bags!
I was very happy to be part of it, plus we were able to film some excellent Footage for the documentary since there was a lot of plastic on the beach and the diverse group gave a beautiful example on how working in community we can make a difference on how much plastic reaches the Ocean.
After the clean up we returned to the EcoCentre to audit the rubbish. We randomly chose 3 of the 18 bags the group collected. The amounts recorded where then multiplied by 6 so to get an approximation of the total amounts collected. It didn’t surprise me that we found nearly 15000 Cigarettes Butts, 960 Straws, 540 Bottle Caps and around 900 pieces in different states of decomposed Plastic bags  in a strip of beach at the most 200 meters long! All of the above are  SINGLE USE PLASTICS which are not recycled so why are we still using plastic that is not recycled????
Most of this rubbish comes through the water drainage of the city so a cigarette butt that someone puts out just before jumping into the tram 50 block away can end up on the beach just as well. This is way it is so important if you smoke to dispose of those butts in bins and not on the streets.
Lastly we also found many plastic bottle wrappers (without the bottles). Let this be a reminder to all Victorians that they have the power to reduce this type of litter by introducing a 10¢ refund scheme for bottles and cans. This legislation has proven both in the Northern Territory and in South Australia to be very effective increasing the recovery rates of these containers dramatically from 35% to 87%. Not only will it mean less litter and plastic pollution but it can also be cash in the pocket of many.
I came upon this amazing video made by Gina Kuettner A Beach Project…” A picturesque display of what seven hours on two different beaches can produce in litter”…. Pure CREATIVITY and FUN! Such a wonderful way to spread the message of plastic Litter on our beaches! Enjoy!
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