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Northern Beaches Clean Up Crew
 Please give us a vote . We've said it before and we're saying it again - the crew is everyone. Everyone who turns up with a big smile to our clean-ups, everyone who picks up litter, everyone who does their part to keep our local environment clean, everyone who who gets muddy and dirty because you believe in kindness and a cleaner local environment. All of you are the crew and now all of you as part of the crew has been nominated for the Westfields local hero award with an opportunity to win money for the crew to buy clean up equipment so we can come back bigger and stronger once Covid19 restrictions ease. To vote (latest the 14th of September and please share this post):
https://surveys.reputation.com/surveys3/run?tenantKey=7afa4106785&templateId=5e5d972a8cdc3757b64dcb04&locationCode=supportoffice&property-value-heroID=594&property-value-centrecode=warringahmall&locale=en_US&fbclid=IwAR3X8U52qrlmXKk0Y0bziF7kt6H2W8FIusxbgJlZzfYQTGW8jW9tn4h0Mn8 #westfieldlocalhero #beachcleanup #loveManly #northernbeachescleanupcrew #plasticfree  If we continue to dump plastic as we have done to date, the quantity floating on the surface could quadruple by the year 2050, and up to 231.6 million tonnes will have polluted the ocean as microplastics.
The picture is better if we stop releasing any plastic into the ocean from 2020. In that scenario, the volume of floating plastic would drop to 59% of its current levels. But the quantity of microplastics in the ocean would still more than double by 2050 as material already trapped in the environment degrades. The problem will be with us for decades, the researchers write: “Mitigating microplastic pollution in the global ocean requires two major components: (1) drastically reducing emissions of plastic pollution in the coming years and (2) actively engaging in removal operations of plastic waste from the marine environment to reduce further generation of secondary microplastics. “Without proper handling and management of accumulated plastic waste, the legacy of the last 70 years of throw-away society will live on through the generation of ever smaller synthetic polymer fragments in soils, freshwater ecosystems and eventually the ocean.” By: Mark Bruer #northernbeachescleanupcrew #beachcleanup  If you see illegal dumping, please report it to the council. If you're moving and got a lot of big items to get rid off, contact the council and they can organise a pick up. All households are eligible for two Bulky Goods Collections within a 12 month period.
Link: https://www.northernbeaches.nsw.gov.au/council/news/quick-reporting-leads-to-illegal-dumping-fines #northernbeachescleanupcrew #litter #rubbish  If you bring your own produce bag when shopping, you don't need to struggle to open up those pesky thin single-use fresh produce bags.
#northernbeachescleanupcrew #plastic #plasticfreeproduce #plasticfree  What to do when your bamboo toothbrush has reached the end of its life as a toothbrush? Why not use it as plant labels or a cleaning brush.
#northernbeachescleanupcrew #reusable #toothbrush  The most environmentally friendly container is the one you already own! Or in Amber's case, the one you can successfully repurpose from bamboo toothbrushes! We're firm believers that plastic-free shelves are just as good on the eyes and even better for the planet.
#northernbeachescleanupcrew #repurpose : @sustainablyamber  You can read - turtles can't. Hundreds of thousands of sea turtles, whales, and other marine mammals, and more than 1 million seabirds die each year from ocean pollution and ingestion or entanglement in marine debris. With millions of tonnes of plastic debris entering our world's oceans on a yearly basis, it is estimated that approximately 52% of all sea turtles have eaten plastic. Please do what you can to reduce your single-use plastic footprint and dispose of it in the safest way possible.
#northernbeachescleanupcrew #plastic #beachcleanup #turtle  People pay a very high price for plastic packaging. It's also a very costly price for nature that is getting polluted by plastic.
#northernbeachescleanupcrew #plasticfree  Artist from Iran depicts saving fish amidst ocean pollution caused by single-use masks.
Disposable masks are made of plastic. Irresponsible disposal of such masks is clogging up the landfills and water bodies globally. Unless you are a front-line healthcare worker, we strongly recommend everyone to go for reusable and washable cloth masks. Remember, reducing waste is the easiest and most impactful. #northernbeachescleanupcrew #plasticfree  People often say to us: "Why clean up Shelly Beach, it's always clean there!" Last time we cleaned up Shelly Beach (which is closest to the aquatic reserve Cabbage Tree Bay) we picked up 594 cigarette butts, 644 food wraps, 595 bits of plastic bags, 255 glass bottles, 427 lids, 74 plastic bottles, 1 couch, 3 chairs, 1 trolley, 1 garden hose, a poster from the old Manly council (it changed to Northern Beaches Council in May 2016) and an injured seagull (fishing line). Every little thing helps - plastic breaks down to smaller pieces and can be mistaken as food by both land and ocean animals. It can entangled and injure and slowly kill animals such as the bandicoots and sea turtles living in this area. Littered cigarette butts leach toxic chemicals into the environment and can contaminate water. The toxic exposure can poison fish, as well as animals who eat cigarette butts. We would like to thank all crew members and everyone else who picks up rubbish on their way 🙏
#northernbeachescleanupcrew #beachcleanup  Pesky fruit stickers 😫
Yes, if stuck to another piece of soft plastic, these pesky little stickers can be REDcycled. Please refrain, however, from sticking a whole bunch of these at once on one piece of soft plastic! They are more likely to fall off and just get stuck to the processing machinery. Plastic is everywhere.😔The best option is of course if you can support your local farmer or bulkfood store and buy fruit without stickers. 😀 #northernbeachescleanupcrew #plastic #recycle #plasticfree #stickers  Time to celebrate with homemade confetti. No more glitter destroying our environment.
#northernbeachescleanupcrew #plasticfree  We want to thank our friends from "The Bower Restaurant" in Manly. (They serve great vegan pancakes too by the way.) Their staff take their bottles and cans to the "Return and Earn" machines and donate the money to the crew so we can buy more pickers and gumboots for crew members when we do clean ups. If you want to help us out too, save this picture/barcode to your phone and scan it at the "Return and Earn" machine and click PayOut afterwards. Thank you again for our lovely community - we are very grateful! 🙏
#northernbeachescleanupcrew #loveManly #community #returnandearn  If you're a tea drinker, this one is for you. Standard square tea bags – used for teas such as Earl Grey, English breakfast and green tea – are "heat sealed", meaning that a thin film of polypropylene is applied to seal the two sides together. Their "string and tag with sachet" range also contains polypropylene and a small amount of acrylic co-polymer emulsion, a plastic-based glue that bonds the bags together.
The way tea bags are manufactured varies depending on the brand but about 70 to 80 per cent of bags are made from compostable paper while the remaining 20 to 30 per cent contains heat-resistant polypropylene. This is to prevent the bag breaking mid-dunk, but it does mean that small pieces of plastic mesh are left behind in the soil when you compost the bags. #northernbeachescleanupcrew #plasticfree  Okay, let’s talk about what’s best for the kitchen bin.
Veronica Maree took this pic at Woolworths, and she's a little frustrated because of how deceiving and confusing this is for the regular shopper just trying their best to make a good decision at the checkout. Here is her great explanation: Multix have come out with a ‘greener’ bin liner option. Looks great on the outside, but let’s break this down. The top bag she's holding is labeled ‘plant based’. Okay, sounds positive right? Well, yeh that’s a positive, it also states that it’s “made from 60% plant-based material, a renewable resource from the sugarcane industry” which is indeed a great move, but if you look closely, it is also labelled as ‘degradable’. Now, degradable is not to be confused with ‘biodegradable’ because anything that is degradable will not fully break down into the soil when it ends up in landfill. Instead, it turns into tiny pieces of plastic that will never break down, continuing the micro plastics issue we currently face in our oceans. Probably not a great option. Okay the second option, same brand, being Multix, same ‘greener’ bold labelling, but here are the differences. Firstly, instead of ‘plant based’ labelling, they have it labelled as ‘compostable’. It also states that it’s ‘biodegradable’. This is where it makes ALL the difference. So compostable and biodegradable are sort of the same, but sort of not. To the average person, it would seem the same, but here are the slight differences. They both aim to break down safely into the earth, however, biodegradable is made for breaking down in landfills, and compostable is made with a specific set of requirements to break down safely in a compost. Usually the compostable bags are quicker to break down too. So if you were after a bag safe to put into your compost bin, we can understand how this could be confusing. We look closer on the back of the label and it is marked as “home compostable AS 5810 ABAP 20006” and “compostable AS 4736 ABAP 10060”. These numbers refer to the certification from the Australian Bioplastics Association. This is a good option to purchase, and they have different sizes to choose from, plus it is labelled as safe for composts too, so double great. Lastly, Veronica wanted to shed light on another brand called ‘compost-a-pak”. These were so clearly marked compostable, with zero confusing labels. This is also certified and marked on the back of the label “compostable certification number AS 4736-2006 ABAP 10019” and “home compostable certification number ABAP 20001”. It also states under the headline “made from vegetable material and plastic free. Australian certified compostable”. This is so crystal clear and easy to understand, and Veronica wants to show the stark difference in the marketing and labelling. We have seen many people putting the first option on the conveyor belt at the checkout and we know those people are just trying to make the best decision, but it’s not fair that they’re being misled. She couldn’t find other sizes in this brand besides the one, but it’s still a very good option. We hope this helps you make your decision a little easier when you go shopping next. Thank you Veronica for your great explanation! #northernbeachescleanupcrew #plastic  You can make your on produce bags from old curtains - you often find second hand thin curtains at Vinnies. Bring out the crafty side of you!
#northernbeachescleanupcrew #plasticfree  People often say to us: "Why clean up Shelly Beach, it's always clean there!" Last time we cleaned up Shelly Beach (which is closest to the aquatic reserve Cabbage Tree Bay) we picked up 594 cigarette butts, 644 food wraps, 595 bits of plastic bags, 255 glass bottles, 427 lids, 74 plastic bottles, 1 couch, 3 chairs, 1 trolley, 1 garden hose, a poster from the old Manly council (it changed to Northern Beaches Council in May 2016) and an injured seagull (fishing line). Every little thing helps - plastic breaks down to smaller pieces and can be mistaken as food by both land and ocean animals. It can entangled and injure and slowly kill animals such as the bandicoots and sea turtles living in this area. Littered cigarette butts leach toxic chemicals into the environment and can contaminate water. The toxic exposure can poison fish, as well as animals who eat cigarette butts. We would like to thank all crew members and everyone else who picks up rubbish on their way 🙏
#northernbeachescleanupcrew #beachcleanup  Pesky fruit stickers!
Yes, if stuck to another piece of soft plastic, these pesky little stickers can be REDcycled. Please refrain, however, from sticking a whole bunch of these at once on one piece of soft plastic! They are more likely to fall off and just get stuck to the processing machinery. Plastic is everywhere.The best option is of course if you can support your local farmer or bulkfood store and buy fruit without stickers. #northernbeachescleanupcrew #plastic #recycle #plasticfree #stickers  We did some scouting around for litter last week and we found these in Dee Why Lagoon. How old do you think they are? Another evidence that litter doesn't "go away".
#northernbeachescleanupcrew #litter  Cigarettes are the most littered item on earth. Worldwide, about 4.5 trillion cigarettes are littered each year. Cigarettes contain more than 7,000 chemicals, such as arsenic (used to kill rats) and formaldehyde (used to preserve dead animals, and humans, too). Littered cigarette butts leach toxic chemicals into the environment and can contaminate water. The toxic exposure can poison fish, as well as animals who eat cigarette butts. Cigarette filters may look like cotton, but 98 percent of cigarette filters are made of plastic fibers (cellulose acetate) that are tightly packed together, which leads to an estimated 1.69 billion pounds of cigarette butts winding up as toxic trash each year. Cigarettes don’t break down naturally, they can gradually decompose depending on environmental conditions like the rain and sun. Estimates on the time it takes vary, but a recent study found that a cigarette butt was only about 38 percent decomposed after two years.
#northernbeachescleanupcrew #cigarettes #loveManly #northernbeaches #trash #litter  This is what remains of a single-use disposable coffee cup after the cardboard degrades when it ends up in the ocean. The plastic lining can easily be mistaken as a jellyfish by a turtle and can cause intestinal blockages and results in a slow painful death through starvation.
#northernbeachescleanupcrew #takeaway #coffee #plasticocean Many conservationists are raising alarm about growing ocean pollution caused by the increased waste created out of the coronavirus pandemic. With a lifespan of 450 years, these masks and gloves are an ecological timebomb given their lasting environmental consequences for our planet. A recent study in the Environment, Science & Technology journal estimates that 129 billion face masks and 65 billion gloves are being used each month. Regarding COVID waste, of course we must favor reusable masks and gloves. Shared from Angry Earth #northernbeachescleanupcrew #plasticfree   What's wrong with the old fashioned bar of soap? Nothing. Time to bring it back and get rid of those single use plastic soap bottles.
#northernbeachescleanupcrew #plasticfree |
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