Our planet, beaches and lagoons need your help
The "Northern Beaches Clean Up Crew" meet the last Sunday of every month at 10 am to clean up a local beach or lagoon on Sydney’s northern beaches and we have removed tonnes of waste from local beaches and lagoons in our local area for more than 5 years. "The Northern Beaches Clean Up Crew" have built up a community of like-minded people wanting to do a good deed for the planet. We started as two friends wanting to do something good for the planet and we have now grown to over 100+ crew members meeting up on the last Sunday of every month to clean a local beach or lagoon. The crew consists of people of all ages, from toddlers to 90+ with backgrounds from all around the world and we try our best to create a welcoming and warm community to establish new friendships while we do our clean-ups.
"Northern Beaches Clean Up Crew" also educates about how plastic and other rubbish impact our environment and what we can do to reduce our single-use plastic footprint. We do presentations for schools and community groups for free because we believe in the good cause and want to spread awareness about what people can do to reduce their single-use plastic footprint. We have learnt that many people do care, but they don't know where to start and that's where we are trying to help.
We believe in kindness and it is very important for us that we stay as a community grassroots organisation and that we run on kindness and good deeds. The gloves we use have been donated by our lovely crew members, the buckets we use are old mayo buckets donated from local restaurants and our bags are old horse food or grass bags. All of this works brilliantly but to make things a bit better, we are trying to save money for a trailer.
We are hoping that we can get some help here to buy some pickers (for our younger crew members and our less able crew members) and some gumboots for our younger crew members (3-5-year-olds) who are more than happy to get down and dirty to reach that extra piece of plastic that is just a tiny bit too far away. We are hoping to raise funds to purchase this equipment so our clean-up will be better, more comfortable and more welcoming than ever.
Some Plastic Facts
One easy thing we can do to help save our environment is to clean up rubbish. Pick up plastic, Styrofoam and other items from the local beach or area. Trash ends up in the ocean where it pollutes the environment and kills wildlife. Plastic in the ocean breaks down into such small segments that pieces of plastic from a one liter bottle could end up on every mile of beach throughout the world. It takes, 1000 years for plastic to degrade and one million sea birds and 100,000 marine mammals are killed annually from plastic in our oceans. 44 per cent of all seabird species, 22 per cent of cetaceans, all sea turtle species and a growing list of fish species have been documented with plastic in or around their bodies. Please say no to plastic: Say no to soy fish containers, plastic bags, plastic straws and plastic bottles as a start. Bring your own coffee cup to the café and if you have forgotten it, get the takeaway coffee with no lid or give yourself a break and sit down and have your coffee in a porcelain cup. You can make a huge difference for this planet by changing some small everyday habits.
1. Safety Equipment
We would love some new safety equipment (Gumboots, Ladder, Children's gloves, First Aid Kit, Tongs and Rubbish Pickers) to keep our amazing crew members safe during our monthly clean-ups.
2. Stand Up Paddleboards and paddles
We have had crew members coming with Stand Up Paddleboards at times to our events and it can make a huge difference when it comes to getting the litter and plastic that is further out and hard to reach. It can be very daunting at times to see those big pieces of rubbish/plastic and you know would be able to reach it if you had better equipment.
Any contribution, no matter how small will make a huge difference to the "Northern Beaches Clean Up Crew", the local community, precious wildlife and our environment. After all, don't we all want cleaner beaches and healthy wildlife not entangled in plastic? To see more about the work we do, please check us out on Facebook and Instagram or on our website: Northern Beaches Clean Up Crew. We also have one YouTube presentation What we do and why we do it?
