90x2030 Club (Environment)

Cape Town’s biggest clean up

Springfield Convent High School and the Dominican School for the Deaf, Wynberg schools joined several hundred Atlantic seaboard learners for an International Coastal Clean Up on Milnerton’s lighthouse beach. Thanks to the generosity of Peninsula Beverages Our School Cares programme the Milnerton clean up event was the largest of its kind in the Western Cape on the weekend that also was designated as Clean Up the World with 480 participants.

Eight Cape Town schools were given the opportunity of becoming ‘Waste Wise”, as well as three community groups, Zusakhey from Du Noon, Eco-Maties from Stellenbosch, and PACT (Passionate About Cape Town) social networking group. Included from the southern suburbs was a group of boarders from the Dominican School for the Deaf in Wynberg with children aged from 4 years old to teenagers.

After spending a few hours walking, playing and litter picking the group collected 638 bags of litter. In addition to the bags of the usual recreational litter five large pieces of wood, a tractor tyre, fishing lines, a plastic toilet bowl, decayed see-weed, and a frog with the colouring of a Cape river frog, was picked up. Springfield’s head of geography Fiona Smith will be getting the girls to dissect the specimen! It is estimated that Solid Waste staff took over 3200 kg of waste to the landfill site. After the hard but rewarding volunteer work the participants were treated to refreshments and presented with a goodie bag as a momento of this community caring initiative.

In addition to cleaning the beach Bloemhof Girls High, Stellenbosch and Springfield Convent conducted an audit for International Ocean Conservancy. This is a painstaking task but does indicate the types of litter found on our beaches, either recreational litter left by beachgoers, or trash dumped by boats and ships, or brought down the canals and rivers running through the suburbs. A local resident complimented the group on their efforts and suggested that the Black River mouth/ Milnerton Lagoon be cleaned up!