Turns out you actually can’t beat Wellington on a good day! Early on Saturday 22 April a bright-eyed crew signed in at Scorching Bay for the Weta Digital sponsored cleanup. The crew included employees, friends and family of the Weta Digital group, as well as the general public who love the Miramar Peninsula and want to give back.

The weather could not have been more perfect! After registration at the Sustainable Coastlines event tent, which overlooked the beautiful calm Wellington Harbour, we opened the day with a presentation from Sustainable Coastlines’ Wellington crew. This helped put the beach cleanup in context of our Love Your Coast Programme: Weta Digital have sponsored this education, training and beach cleanup programme for the past two years, allowing Sustainable Coastlines to run their school events for free. In term 4 of 2016 we educated over 3,600 children in the effects of littering and single-use plastics on the marine environment, and took more than 2,400 of them to their local beach to enable them to take the solutions into their own hands and deepen that connection with the place they love.

After a quick health and safety reminder, our 100 volunteers were ready to go! Sustainable Coastlines’ staff members led a convoy to the heavily impacted Evan’s Bay, while the rest of the team worked north and south of Scorching Bay.  They had instruction to search the high tide line where the floating micro-plastics are often stranded, as well as the bushes and verges along the roadside where rubbish accumulates before traveling via storm drains to the ocean.

The groups did amazingly well, picking up more than 1,500 litres of large, small and strange pieces of plastic!

After a couple of hours of heads down under the sun, everyone headed back to base for a well-deserved lunch. The crew was then treated to the calming sounds of Miles Calder’s acoustic music, and then enjoyed the delicious tacos and burritos prepared for us by the fantastic Andres – The Burrito King!

Huge thanks for to the awesome team from Amy and the Weta Digital crew – we really couldn’t do our work without your help. Thanks also to Meridian Energy for lending us their canopy, Miles Calder for the music, Andres the Burrito King for food, Wellington City Council for helping us with rubbish disposal, and the Sustainable Coastlines’ crew – Miriam Sherrat and Sara Stuart who kept everyone motivated and safe.

Looking forward to doing it all again soon!

Oliver – Wellington Programmes Manager

On Saturday 22 April 2017, from 9:30am, Sustainable Coastlines invites you to meet at Scorching Bay for a fun, family day of beach cleanups, beach games followed by a catered lunch.

Weta Digital has come on board again as the principal sponsor of our 2016 ‘Love your Coast Wellington’ clean-up and education tour. At last year’s event the Weta Crew cleaned up almost 5000 items of rubbish from Evans, Worser and Scorching Bays.

We’ll send out teams to beaches around the Miramar Peninsula, and find the corners and coves where the rubbish is blown and washed up.