We live in such natural beauty, but on many levels we take nature and what it means for our survival, for granted. Fortunately, it is becoming cool again to be concerned about the environment, to wear the badge of “greenie” with pride. Being green, and indeed beyond green*, is no longer a luxury cause, but rather day-by-day it is becoming an imperative for our survival on the planet we are married to.
So on the 8th of June it was a pleasure for the Midbrak Conservancy to rock 11 volunteers out of their beds and out of their daily lives to join us on with our contribution to World Oceans Day. Our mission was ‘search and capture’ as much plastic and other rubbish lining the western and eastern banks of the beautiful Little Brak River estuary.
Kitting up with surgical gloves, garden gloves and wellingtons, an enthusiastic team sprang to work with surgical precision and busily scrubbed and gathered the plastic plaque from the eastern and western banks of the Little Brak River.
The main culprit we wanted to root out was plastic, of which we found large amounts lining both banks, but broken bottles (mostly alcoholic beverages), fishing line, rope, sponge, dumped clothing and fibre glass was also gathered.
In total eighteen full rubbish bags were collected. A relaxing braai was enjoyed after all the hard work. Our aim is to hold the clean-up every quarter, as there is still much to be done to make our estuary healthy again.
Midbrak Conservancy would like to thank: the Little Brak Tennis Club members and especially Yvonne Dippenaar for their support, Sandra Labuschagne, LappiesLabuschange, Alta Scott, MartliPrinsloo, AnnaliGeldenhuys, Wendy Wiles, Hermi Kruger, Sharné Thorpe, Stella Logie,Sunelle de Villiers and John Kieser of Plastics SA.
* “Beyond green” is a term referring to a new way of environmental thinking that emphasises human impact not only being reduced to ‘least impact’, but rather finding ingenious ways that nature can benefit from our presence – a 180 degree shift in approach. It involves sciences such as bio-mimicry.
