There are almost a dozen bins at Manly’s jewel Shelly Beach, yet still a Centuria of caring cleaners was needed to bring it back to health on the weekend…
More than 100 caring locals turned up at Manly’s Shelly Beach to clean up other people’s rubbish yesterday, Sunday morning 28 August.
Beginning at 10am, volunteers joined the Northern Beaches Clean Up Crew operation, their largest gathering of 2022, taking several hours and netting the usual assortment of strange objects, including an Aldi supermarket trolley, which would have been wheeled over 2km from Manly Wharf.
Northern Beaches Clean Up Crew is an organisation which brings volunteers together to remove garbage accumulating in and around our waterways and along our shorelines.
In addition to the shopping trolley, volunteers report finding a chair, large cushion, a backpack as well as the usual culprits – cigarette butts, toys, old clothing, bottles, cans and plenty of single-use coffee cups.
“Apologies if we didn’t get the chance to chat to everyone today, but we truly would like to thank each and every one for helping protecting our beautiful environment. Protect what you love,” the group wrote on their social media page.
Manly Observer took photos on the day and caught up with the group’s founder Malin Frick to discuss the event.
“We had crew members in the water, in the bush area around Shelly Beach and on the beach,” she said.
“We had a few volunteer divers that spontaneously joined our event. They dropped off a few old glass bottles on our rubbish pile. Some swimmers came with soft plastic – mostly food wraps – and dropped that on our pile.”
In addition to the usual finds, she said volunteers uncovered one of the strangest items yet.
“We found a sealed tube that contained a person’s life story typed up and laminated. However, there was no contact details so we don’t know where it came from.”
“We found a sealed tube that contained a person’s life story typed up and laminated. However, there was no contact details so we don’t know where it came from.”
“We filled about five big bags of rubbish. Possibly more, because we also found some bigger items like an old [worn] big backpack and a chair,” she’s said.
“Most of this rubbish was discarded by beach users and most of it was related to eating and drinking: picnic items such as plastic cutlery and plastic cups and many drink containers.”
Given the rate of garbage accumulation, when might you need to return to Shelly Beach to undertake another clean-up operation?
“Shelly Beach has over ten bins, yet people litter. It’s a busy area with many people there daily, picnicking, walking, swimming, diving. It’s about educating people how they can reduce their single-use-plastic footprint.
“We as organisers of Northern Beaches Clean Up Crew all have full time jobs and unfortunately cannot organise more events at this time, due to work commitments. However, we do encourage people to do their own clean ups and we will happily share their pictures on our social media.
“We also focus on education and how people can reduce their single-use-plastic footprint – you can follow our social media to learn more about this. We are trying to spread out our clean up events all along the Northern Beaches to raise awareness about plastic pollution and how we can best tackle this big problem.”
An upbeat part of the event: Northern Beaches Clean Up Crew announced on their Instagram page that a young fellow named Max celebrated his sixth birthday with the volunteers on clean-up duty.
“Yes, Max has been a long term crew member for many years now. He’s a little legend and very positive about saving our planet. He has showed strong concerns about the turtles in Cabbage Tree Bay and how they have been on care for many months due to ingestion of plastic and balloons.”
Northern Beaches Clean Up Crew
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/northernbeachescleanupcrew/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NorthernBeachesCleanUpCrew/
Online: https://www.northernbeachescleanupcrew.com/
