Two local Landcare groups had very successful Clean Up Australia Day events recently.
Snowy West Landcare Group had 18 people attend with seven bags of rubbish and one bag of recycling collected on Sunday.
This year’s event was held in an area near the Corringle Slips.
The large areas they worked in appeared to be clear of litter, but now after the efforts of the group, actually are.
The rubbish picked up mostly consisted of soft plastic (eg. chip packets) and the recycling material was mainly drink containers (eg. water bottles or alcohol).
Much of the rubbish collected had been in the environment for a long time. Cans and bottles were cashed at the recycling depot, with the money donated to Orbost SES.
Although it has been some years since Snowy West Landcare had a cleanup day, they are keen to follow it up again with another event soon, due to the great satisfaction gained by the participants.
Marlo Landcare Group has been consistently running a Clean Up Australia day for many years.
This year was a fair bit more productive than expected – they removed the equivalent of six full bags of rubbish from around the various visitor nodes on the estuary.
They had 13 people sign up.
Perhaps the most interesting bits of rubbish the group found were fire damaged boat accessories that they think were associated with a recent fire on a boat in the estuary.
Getting the amount of rubbish they did took a fair bit of ferreting around in less accessible places, and there was very little conspicuous rubbish, which is a good result and a tribute to some combination of generally tidy behavior of people using the estuary and some local people who are persistent rubbish removers, “day to day”.
If you are interested in any of these highly rewarding activities that these and other Landcare groups get up to, contact the local facilitator, (office is next door to the Orbost Post office).
