Earth and Ocean Lovers Unite
Earth and Ocean Lovers Unite
By Charlotte from Earth Child
At the beginning of September, Earth Child teamed up with a Bronte to Bondi beach cleanup walk with over 40 people attending. It was great to have lots of people attend and we hope that we can see some regular faces and new faces in coming months.
We are excited to have AusMap microplastics equipment to collect and collate data.
Here’s what we collected on our last beach clean up:
Soft Plastics (scrunchable)
- Chip, confectionary & ice-cream wrappers: 15
- Other food wrapping: 7
- Small supermarket/retail bags: 6
- Bait bags:1
- All other soft plastics(usually smaller bits): 50
Food/beverage plastics
- Plastic beverage bottles(single use): 6
- Takeaway coffee cups: 9
- Bottle caps & lids: 9
- Takeaway food containers: 5
- Straws: 1
- Lollipop sticks:16
- Other recyclable plastics: 3
- Face masks: 5
- Doggy poop bags: 16
- Fishing gear: 1
- Rope: 1
- Cigarette butts: 4
- Polystyrene packaging: 31
- Other misc plastic items (microplastics) :over 9000 bits of microplastics
- Pieces of broken glass: 35
Paper/cardboard
- Fast food packaging: 2
- Napkins/tissues/toilet paper: 4
- Large paper: 1
- Small paper(receipts) 2
- Other paper : 6
Metals
- Aluminium beverage cans: 24
- MetalBottle caps: 1
Wood
- Other wood: 11
Mixed Material items
- Clothing & textiles: 13
- Food scraps: 11
- Boogie Board
- Thong
We make a difference every month coming together and we can make an impact every day just picking up a piece of rubbish.
We meet the first Sunday of every months. If you haven’t signed up yet, here’s the link: https://events.humanitix.com/earth-child-s-bondi-beach-cleanup
Note from Transition Bondi Convenor, Kit:
“Last Sunday I joined this group at Bondi Beach and it was an interesting event. Charlotte is an inspiring and charming leader; she stays calm under pressure (a bunch of people all wanting her attention at the same time to check off their items) and is totally committed to the environment and to mobilising people to act together.
“It was amazing to work with Blas Zlatar who is doing a PhD on microplastics, using the AusMap equipment , sieving sand to count microplastics in a small area, to then calculate (extrapolate) on a larger scale. Blas was a guest speaker at one of our Guest Dinner events back in July.
“People of all ages joined, about 10 of us, in what is another example of ‘citizen science’. We’ll be hearing more about this as it is becoming very important for professionals and experts to receive reports from ‘the field’ about the number of creatures that are to be found in places all over Australia.
“Other examples of citizen science that we have been involved in have been a pollinator count (in the garden), and there is a bird count soon. Also frog counts are being undertaken. Do get involved, if you fancy yourself something of a ‘scientist’! Or even if you just like to observe the different non-human life around us.” Kit 🙂