Cleaner looking beach still needs a clean-up

With such regular news stories about the huge issue of plastic in the ocean it’s refreshing to find a beach in Hawke’s Bay looking relatively clean.

Staff from 3R, Wilsigns and Hawke’s Bay Technologies took to the shoreline at Haumoana for 3R’s first biannual beach clean-up of the year, on May 24. This was the second time 3R and some of its suppliers had combed this section of beach and the volume of rubbish was notably less than the clean-up in October last year when around 200kg-worth was collected.

However, the 12 of us still managed to fill a small trailer with two tyres – one being a truck tyre – old garden furniture, scrap metal and a variety of things you should rather see in a household recycling or rubbish bin. There was of course plenty of plastic as well as some more unusual items, like a traffic cone and rugby scrum cap – it goes to show that most dumped rubbish does eventually tend to end up in the ocean.

After enjoying some well-earned refreshments, the material was sorted and the recyclables set aside. In all around 80kg had to be sent to landfill, excluding the truck tyre which our Chief Executive took for her chooks. It seems her chickens prefer roosting outside in old tyres rather than their comfy hen house.

A note was made of what we collected and passed on to Sustainable Coastlines to use in their data collection.

The clean-up forms part of 3R’s Good Friday Leave which allows staff to take time off work for community projects or personal development. We’d like to say a big thanks to the staff Wilsigns and Hawke’s Bay Technologies for coming along and helping out.