900
A massive thanks to everyone who took part in the Love your Coast North Shore Clean-up! With your help we removed over 16,000 litres (around 3.3 tonnes!) of rubbish from the beaches, mangroves and waterways of Auckland’s North Shore over the three day event.
On Thursday, around 60 students, businesses and volunteers got stuck into clean-ups in Torbay, Wairau Creek, Okura and Karepiro Bay. On Friday we hit the beaches en masse, with over 750 volunteers cleaning-up stretches of coastline all over the North Shore. Finally on Saturday, over 100 hardy souls braved driving rain and mud to storm the shores around our eight event stations. All in all over 900 volunteers got together during this event to scour the beaches of Auckland’s North Shore for trash: an effort we should all be proud of.
These incredible results wouldn’t have been possible without you, nor without the help of the rest of our supporters. A huge thank you to you all. Please pass this message on to anyone you know who took part.
We have a bunch of great photos from the event. See them by scrolling through the album at the top of this page or through our Facebook album here. Remember – if you’re a Facebook user – ‘Like’ us to stay in the loop. If you have your own shots from the event we’d love to see them – just read the section below about the photo competition and send them through!
Here is what some of the media had to say about the event:
On Tuesday the 19th and Wednesday the 20th of April we conducted an audit of all the rubbish collected at the Envirowaste Constellation Drive Transfer Station with the help of PD workers through the Department of Corrections. We are using the data we collected during this audit to create educational resources, and will combine these results with those from the rest of our coastal clean-up events to gain a detailed understanding of how best to prevent pollution of our coastal areas.
Over 40,000 individual pieces were removed: an awesome effort from everyone. We found that the rubbish came from a variety of sources, including illegal dumping, recreational fishing, plastic product manufacturing and a flow from the city’s storm water drains. Download the event results here to see for yourself exactly how much, and what, we collected.
We are holding a competition for the best shots from the event. To enter, all you need to do is send your favourite photos to Judge Joe from the Shutter Pirates at [email protected] by 5pm Friday 6 May, 2011. You can enter as many photos as you like, and you’ll be in to win awesome prizes including a sweet digital camera from Sony and sunnies from Arnette. Remember to tell us where you took your photos.
The legal stuff: By submitting photos into the Love your Coast North Shore Clean-up Photo Comp you are agreeing to grant Sustainable Coastlines Incorporated, any media and partner organisations a license to use, distribute publish or exhibit these photos in any manner either now known or subsequently devised and without any restrictions, in perpetuity. If you request, your photo will be duly credited whenever used in this way.
We welcome your feedback and would very much appreciate any testimonials you may have from the day. You can provide these simply by emailing [email protected]. This will help us create better projects and give more to the community in the future.
We have already had a number of requests to run this event on an annual basis and so will be sure to keep in touch regarding plans for 2012.
On Thursday 14, Friday 15 and Saturday the 16th of April, schools, businesses, families and volunteers and all others who love the beaches of the North Shore will come together to take part in the biggest coastal clean-up ever organised in the area: the ‘Love your Coast’ North Shore Clean-up.
The clean-up will focus on the beaches from Long Bay in the north down through Devonport and to the Harbour Bridge in the south – aiming to pick-up every bit of trash from the coastline along the way.
If you have registered to take part on Thursday and Friday we will be contacting you individually today to let you know when and where you will be cleaning-up. To confirm your plans if you haven’t heard from us please call Event Director Sam Judd on 021 058 9349.
Clean-ups will be taking place all along Auckland’s North Shore between 10am and 2pm. Low tide is at 11.18am, so these times give us the best access to the coast.
All you need to do is choose one of our eight meeting stations listed below, come down and meet one of our representatives for a quick briefing and to collect your rubbish sacks and gloves. From there you’ll head out to the nearby beach to pick up trash!
This event is going to be huge: the areas not covered by our stations are being cleaned-up by school students and businesses on Thursday and Friday. That said, you are more than welcome to head out to anywhere not nearby our stations. Simply pick up the equipment from the event base at the Milford Reserve, just in front of the Milford Cruising Club, anytime from 8.30am onwards.
Our stations will be very easy to find – when you get there just look out for big white and blue flags and our friendly rep in a white ‘Love your Coast’ T-shirt. Any problems, just give our Event Director Sam Judd a call on 021 058 9349 and he’ll point you in the right direction.
Meeting time: Between 10am and 2pm, Saturday 16 April.
When you’ve had enough time on the beach, please bring your haul back to the event station where you started or to the event base at Milford Reserve for our after-function. Our reps will be looking out for those who have put in the most effort to award prizes afterwards.
If you‘re unable to bring the rubbish back to where you started (too big, heavy or hazardous) that’s okay, but please make sure that you leave your rubbish protected from wind, well above the high tide mark and provide clear instructions to a rep from our team on where it is so that we can pick it up later.
At the end of the clean-up event on Saturday we’ll be holding a prizegiving, games for kids, and BBQ from 2pm to 4pm outside the Milford Cruising Club at Milford Reserve. This is a great chance for everyone who participates over the three days to get together and celebrate what they have achieved. All welcome.
We are holding a competition for the best shots from the event. Just bring along your camera and send your favourite ones to us at [email protected]. Winners will receive epic prizes including a sweet camera from Sony and sunnies from Arnette.
A bit more background
Easterly winds – which are quite common in this part of the country during these hot summer months – tend to blow rubbish onto North Shore beaches, so the timing is perfect for a big clean-up.
As with every event we organise we will collect detailed data on just how much and what types of rubbish we picked up, with help from Department of Corrections PD workers. This will contribute to the creation of educational resources that will help us learn more about where rubbish is coming from and how to prevent it from getting there in the first place. These results will be openly shared with everyone who takes part, providing feedback to schools and material for supporting businesses to use in sustainability reporting.
Who’s involved?
Everyone is welcome to take part, however under 18 year olds must be supervised by a parent or guardian. Sustainable Coastlines is a registered New Zealand charity with solid results from events in the Galapagos Islands, Kingdom of Tonga and New Zealand. We focus on community-wide participation in activities at grass roots level, with education of young people about coastline protection while having heaps of fun the underlying priorities.
More information?
As our planning team fine-tunes event details we’ll update this page with all of the details and helpful information. Register for the event here to receive further updates as plans progress, or sign-up to our mailing list using the form on the right hand side of this page for invites to future events.
