Organised by one of the homeschool moms from Hermanus, we ended up being a smaller than planned group thanks to the unpredictable weather here. We live in one of those places where you can experience all four seasons in one day! Anyway, the hardy few (5 adults and 17 children ages 3 to 14) who braved the elements, enthusiastically went out to hunt for rubbish! We were all amazed by the fact that at first glance, the beach looks quite clean, then when you start walking and really looking....bottle caps, glass, fishing wire, building rubble etc....it's all there!
After collecting all the trash, we then had the task of sifting through it all again so that it could be cataloged for analysis. On the left is Tracey (who organised this event) sifting through the rubbish so we could catalog it. Thanks to the wind this had to be completed in the back of a two vehicles so that we didn't have to collect it all again! Once we'd cataloged the contents of the bags, we then weighed them and left them at the collection point. We had about 1,5 hours of bearable weather and managed to collect 33,5kg of rubbish. I'm glad though that we participated as I think we all learnt a lot from the experience. You'd be amazed at how even little pieces of plastic (the size of a 5 or 10 cent coin) add up and what an impact they can have on coastal sea and bird life.
