FALSE BAY
Whatnot Shoes
Checkers Centre Plumstead
www.thewhatnotshoes.co.za Telephone: 021 762 3716
until 26. September
valid till 17.March ‘20 TUESDAY 22 September 2020 | Tel: 021 910 6500 | Email: post@peoplespost.co.za | Website: www.peoplespost.co.za
@ThePeoplesPost
People’s Post
FALSE BAY
Locals make clean sweep RACINE EDWARDES RACINE.EDWARDES@MEDIA24.COM @RAEEDWARDES
O
n the third Saturday of September each year, citizens around the world head to their nearest beach to take part in International Coastal Clean-up Day. This weekend, Cape Town locals took up the challenge to rid their beaches of waste too. On Saturday 19 September, several organisations and initiatives on the False Bay coast, such as The Beach Co-op and Clean Simon’s Town among others, participated in and encouraged others to support clean-up activities which took place from 8:30 to 10:30. Monica Mason, a Noordhoek resident whose husband, Philip, owns the Epic Print & Design store in Muizenberg, says beach clean-ups are a regular event. “I organise monthly beach clean-ups, so there’s quite a lot of people walking around cleaning up litter. I’m passionate about litter – we have a problem with litter and obviously the litter around here is just going to end up in the ocean, so it’s bad for the environment. And it doesn’t help with tourism.” Ewan Bloomfield, a relatively new Muizenberg resident, says Saturday’s event was his first. “We just moved here and we wanted to get a bit more involved in the local community. Also, we were thinking, as we move out of this Covid-19 time, we could do things a little better.” Bloomfield collected litter with his baby, Oban, and says clean-ups could become a regular activity for them to take part in. He adds the most common item he found was cigarette butts. The Beach Co-op’s Prof Peter Ryan, who has been monitoring beach litter since the 1980s, writes: “Packaging has also become more ‘sophisticated’. We now have sports drink bottles that need a lid for their lids, and sweets are wrapped individually, even though they come in a plastic bag. Such redundancies didn’t exist in the 1980s. They have caused the litter stream to grow even faster than our burgeoning human population.” With litter growing exponentially, the Dirty Dozen list was formed to track the number of carrier bags, chip packets, cigarette lighters, cooldrink bottles, cooldrink lids, earbuds, fishing line, light sticks, plas-
About 20 large bags, approximately 80kg of litter, was collected by the group who participated in the clean-up organised by the Epic Print and Design store in Muizenberg.. PHOTO: MONICA MASON tic lollipop sticks, straws, sweet wrappers and water bottles littering our beaches. Local resident Nadia Sitas, however, explains that with the outbreak of Covid-19 and the safety measures people need to take, ecoactivists have been warned of the common appearance of face masks. “It’s hasn’t been too bad but I did find all sorts of things. I found my first mask! It’s not exciting. It’s one of the fabric ones. And I found lots of the bad things; bottle tops, plastic straws,” she says. She adds that The Beach Co-op was encouraging those participating in the cleanup to log the items they’ve found on the Marine Debris Tracker app. The app allows residents to help make a difference by using the collected data to show the coastal litter problem at local beaches, or even at a beach that
they may be visiting. Shay Maritz, a Clovelly resident, says the Beach Co-op helped her find an initiative to join. “I came out to the clean-up because I saw the post from The Beach Co-op and I have a small business and I donate to them – Makeba, it’s an eco-friendly, biodegradable macramé business. So, 5% of all my earning goes directly to them at the end of my sales each month.” She explains that the funds raised are used for a range of activities, including clean-ups, and to drive awareness programmes. Sea Point resident Kate Aitken and Fish Hoek resident Olivia Badach did their part on Muizenberg beach. “I’m very passionate about looking after our environment and caring for our environment, so it’s just something that resonat-
ed with me. And then we both work for Wellness Warehouse, so being in the space of wellness, it was an initiative we also put out to the staff at the company. I don’t do the clean-ups regularly, although I have been involved before but, if I’m walking down the street in my area, I’m proactive and I collect the litter,” says Aitken. Badach adds: “For both of us, it’s a personal passion, so now we have the opportunity to really motivate and share that and push to get people involved. It’s about tapping into something that worldwide needs awareness, and to create more awareness in local communities.” V For more information, visit The Beach Co-op at www.thebeachcoop.org/ or the Marine Debris Programme at https://marinedebris.noaa.gov or Epic Print at www.epicprint.co.za to get involved.