Fatima Halloum
A grand piano, a horse and the rubbish collected by Beach Patrol 3030 near Werribee South Beach last week all have share a common trait.
They each weigh approximately 400 kilograms.
The clean-up group has been operating since 2015, and members meet for an hour on the second Sunday of each month to remove rubbish from the municipality’s beaches & waterways.
Despite a recent report by the CSIRO suggesting Australian coastal plastic pollution had decreased by 29 per cent, Beach Patrol coordinator Rob Bradley said he doesn’t think the findings were accurate for Wyndham.
“I don’t think it has reduced as much…there’s still a heap of plastic going out in waterways and it’s a problem,” Mr Bradley said.
“We were out at the weekend, there was heaps of rubbish just dumped there.”
Mr Bradley said the crew had been cleaning “pretty disgusting” rubbish at end of Crawford’s Road, which had been a “hotspot for a long time”.
“There’s paper, take away food packaging, lots of bottles, glass and plastic, lots of cans,” he said.
“There’s things like garbage bags full of nappies, and all of this is just on the foreshore near the beach.
“It all becomes part of the rubbish that’s washed up on the beach, it’s pollution and you’re swimming in stuff,” he said.
Mr Bradley says there’s a number of things members of the community can do to reduce waste near our waterways.
“One is to properly dispose of their rubbish… and use recycling facilities including “red cycle” at their local supermarket for soft plastics. We can all try to minimise the amount of plastics we use,” he said.
“What we want to do is stop the rubbish at its source, so that we don’t have to do clean ups.”
Beach Patrol 3030 will celebrate their 7th birthday with a clean up on Sunday, July 10 from 11.30am til 12.30pm, at k Road Cliffs, K Road, Werribee South.
Mr Bradley said new members and people of all ages are encouraged to attend.
