Volunteers spruce up shire

The Eurobodalla is a lot cleaner after 160 volunteers took to streets, beaches and bushland reserves across the shire for Clean Up Australia Day last weekend.

Eurobodalla’s Clean Up coordinator Maree Cadman said individuals and group members enjoyed fine weather when they donned gloves for the big clean up at 35 sites across the shire.

“We had participants from Landcare, youth groups, community associations, Lions Club, and dragon-boat clubs help make our shire shine on the 2-3 March,” she said.

“At South Durras we had a record 29 volunteers roll up!”

The shire’s school children, representing 13 schools, also got stuck in last Friday 1 March, with kids from eight of the schools venturing outside school bounds to help clean up public areas.

Ms Cadman said micro-plastics – “what they are, how they form” – were of particular interest for some school groups.

“The students learnt how some of the rubbish they collected – rope and blocks of foam, as well as more common plastic items like straws and water bottles – breaks down into troublesome micro-plastic,” she said.

She said 150 large hessian bags, almost 15 cubic metres of rubbish, were filled.

“Irresponsibly dumped, bulky items totalling 34 cubic metres were retrieved from bushland behind Mogo, Malua Bay and North Narooma,” she said.

“That makes a total of 48.85 cubic metres of rubbish collected.”

Ms Cadman said some groups reported less recyclable items in this year’s haul.

“Volunteers say this may be partly-attributed to return-and-earn recycling facilities,” she said.

“We still had the inevitable trolleys, retrieved from roadsides, the Moruya River and the Batemans Bay Water Gardens.”

Ms Cadman thanked the volunteers for their tremendous work. She also thanked businesses and organisations who donated over $2,000 worth of vouchers, which were well received by volunteers on the day.

Nationwide, more than 680,000 volunteers at 6,834 registered sites removed about 15,000 tonnes of rubbish from parks, beaches, bushland, streets and waterways. Clean Up Australia chairwoman Pip Kiernan said she was proud to see so many people upholding the legacy of her late father, Ian Kiernan AO, 30 years on.