Love your Coast Waiheke Island

For Seaweek 2015, Sustainable Coastlines celebrated the unique beauty of Auckland’s Hauraki Gulf with a series of clean-up activities on the stunning shores of Waiheke Island.

For the second year running Love your Coast Waiheke Island employed the simple, fun experience of beach clean-ups to raise awareness about how litter dropped on Auckland City’s streets flows through drains, out to sea, and plasters the islands of the Gulf with rubbish.

In the week leading up to the events our staff visited schools to deliver messages on the issue of litter in the marine environment, motivating students to do their bit.

The event series kicked-off with its first clean-up on Thursday 26 February and on the following Saturday our team engaged with the Spirit of New Zealand, sharing our presentation with the crew and heading out to the coast to clean up.

Throughout Seaweek, Sealink ferries transported students from the mainland out to Waiheke, joining local students and caring corporates for clean-up activities. Amphibious boats from Sealegs and the Watercare Harbour Clean-up Trust’s Phil Warren II helped volunteers access hard to reach beaches and the Polynesian Voyaging Society’s traditional vessel Hikianalia sailed to the island to join the clean-up effort.

Little Wai Kitchen in Oneroa provided an on-island hub for anyone wanting to hit the beaches in their own time, and over a dozen volunteers signed-up to clean-up.

In total 585 volunteers joined us to remove 7,755 litres of litter (equivalent to 155 full rubbish sacks) from beaches around Waiheke over 7 different event days. Of equal importance, we delivered our proven Love Your Coast educational presentation to 619 school students and volunteers, helping to spread the message about keeping our beaches litter-free.

A special thank you goes out to our fantastic sponsors, in particular to Singapore Airlines, Pureology and Sealink, whose support allowed us to offer free transport to, from and around the island for all participating school students. Thanks to staff, students and parents from Dawson Primary, Stonefields School, Wesley Primary, Te Huruhi School, Gladstone Primary, Waiheke Primary and Spirit of Adventure Trust.

Thank you also to staff from Contiki, Hilton, Singapore Airlines, Downer, Westpac, Sanford, Eco Pro Cleaning Co and Phoenix Organics (who also provided food and drinks for volunteers) for joining us to clean-up and support our school groups. Thank you to Sealegs for providing an epic boat to move volunteers, film crew and rubbish to and from hard to reach spots. Thanks to our long time friends from Benefitz for the printing. And finally, thank you to the team behind Seaweek 2015, who not only helped out with funding, but whose passion and commitment to celebrating our seas is as inspiring as always.

Without you all, this project simply would not have been possible.

Event details

For Seaweek 2015, Sustainable Coastlines is celebrating the unique beauty of Auckland’s Hauraki Gulf with a series of clean-up activities on the stunning shores of Waiheke Island. For the second year running Love your Coast Waiheke Island employs the simple, fun experience of beach clean-ups to raise awareness about how litter dropped on Auckland City’s streets flows through drains, out to sea, and plasters the islands of the Gulf with rubbish. Last year’s event series netted over 1.5 tonnes of litter.

We are looking for volunteers to join the clean-up fun. There are plenty of opportunities for anyone and everyone who wants to get involved in looking after Waiheke Island’s beautiful beaches, so here’s how you can take part:

Clean-up solo or lead your own group

Reusable rubbish sacks and registration info is available from Little Wai Kitchen, 1/149 Ocean View Road, Oneroa from 9am to 3pm, Saturday 28 February to Friday 6 March. Just turn up, grab a rubbish sack, and record where you want to clean-up. Oh, and if you BYO coffee cup, you’ll get $1 off your coffee! All rubbish collected in our official bags can be disposed of for free at the Waiheke Transfer Station (102-106 Ostend Road).

Tailored team building clean-up for your group

For a modest fee of $500 + transport costs we will organise a tailored experience for you and your team. This includes the planning and logistics for your event, all event equipment, delivery of our proven Love your Coast presentation, an experienced Sustainable Coastlines team leader on the day, and excellent marketing and CSR materials including logo placement on event collateral, photos and comprehensive data on the rubbish collected. Catering can also be provided (additional costs apply). Tailored clean-ups are available Monday 23 February to Friday 6 March inclusive.

Help at an existing clean-up with a school group

We will be running clean-ups with school groups at beaches on Waiheke Island from Monday 2 March to Friday 6 March, and would love your help to provide additional supervision support at these events — a very rewarding experience.

Thank you

A huge thank you to our principal event sponsors Singapore Airlines, Pureology and Sealink, whose generous support has allowed us to provide free transportation to, from and around Waiheke Island for all participating school students. Without your assistance this project simply would not be possible.

Help with land or sea transport

Many parts of Waiheke Island are not accessible by land so we are looking for boats, skippers and people with maritime experience to help us clean up some harder to reach areas. We are also looking for land transport support on certain days to help move volunteers around the island.

Please indicate through the registration form above if you or anyone from your group can help out with land or sea-based transport. Any questions feel free to contact Sam Judd directly on 021 058 9349 or email [email protected].

Event sponsorship

We’re looking for caring corporates to get behind the project. We need to raise funds to cover essential logistical, health & safety and administrative costs to ensure this project’s success. Event sponsorship is therefore vital. Check out our event sponsorship opportunities below to see how we can work together.

We offer event sponsors:

A tailored team building beach clean-up activity with your staff, led by Sustainable Coastlines, including our multimedia educational presentation to motivate your staff to get involved. We bring all clean-up and health and safety equipment, however hard costs for transport to, from and around Waiheke Island.
License to Sustainable Coastlines logos for use on web, marketing and other promotional materials during the course of the event.
Personalised rubbish breakdown and event report with metrics achieved through educational work (great for CSR / sustainability reporting and marketing).
Access and permission to use all event images, footage and results.
Exposure through logo positioning on:
- This page: the official event page.
- Promotional collateral, including our 4x1m event banner for photo opportunities.
- Announcement and exposure of your organisation’s support to Sustainable Coastlines’ social media networks (combined audience of 12,500).
- Opportunity to provide marketing material, run competitions and/or provide giveaways during the event. (Materials used in giveaways must be mutually agreed – with responsible packaging etc).
- Further leveraging opportunities to be discussed.

Event sponsorship is available at two levels:

$500: Event supporter
Includes all of the above.

$3,000: Principal event sponsor
Includes all of the above and in addition:

Prominent logo positioning on all event collateral.
Announcement of your support to our mailing list (4,100 subscribers).
Mention on event media releases (we have a very large profile in the media – see examples here)
Mention of your brand during media interviews wherever possible.