International Coastal Clean-Up Day… A Quick Report…

We have a thing for beach clean-ups… it is a great family outing and an opportunity to get involved and make a noticeable difference to the environment in a fun way… and the results are instantaneous and obvious. Recently it was International Coastal Clean-up Day…

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And I posted this pic on instagram… but the blog post has been waiting for a little TV exposure…

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Here you have a completely clean… pristine looking beach…

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And here are some of the bags of litter collected, clearly the beach was not nearly as clean as it looks. The most collected clutter… drinking straws, lollipop sticks and ear buds (eeewwww…)

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The tragedy of our beaches, especially for the animals that live in them, is that they look clean from far, but they are far from clean. It is a pretty sad reflection that the world over we are not keeping our natural playgrounds clean… and so well done to the folk that make the effort to clean up and make things ship shape…

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And this beach needed an army of cleaners…

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Really… a multitude of folk…

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The pile just grew and grew…

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And a staggering 290 garage bags later… not exactly the pristine beach you might have thought it was…

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This is Hout Bay… one of our top tourist beaches, cleared of litter for a day. You can read more about the clean-up at the Two-Oceans Aquarium website…

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Yesterday this clean-up was featured on SABC1’s YOTV, here’s the link, Credit: Courtesy YOTV and SABC1 ( and granny… if you are reading… you might want to click on the link and watch all the way to the end)…

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4 Replies to “International Coastal Clean-Up Day… A Quick Report…”

  1. Hay Cheryl, that’s a great question. That is an enormous amount of garbage for one day… clearly it was accumulated garbage that was all collected on International Coastal Clean Up Day… we have been shocked at the amount of rubbish we find on apparently clean beaches when we have done clean ups. Even hiking in the game park, where you think it would be pristine, it is far from… A lot of rubbish washes up, there is always fishing gear and on beaches where folk go… lots of straws and cigarette butts. It really is shocking how much litter there is when you stop and take a look. Mostly we are just ambling past and don’t even see it. But when you have a bag to fill, you see things that you normally step right over. I have a feeling that you are nowhere near a beach clean-up… there must be some form of countryside clean-up to join in the UK? Have a great day.

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