We chose a perfect day to be out in the sunshine to do some mahi on the beach with the fine folk at Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

The 20 HPE staff, and two Sustainable Coastlines staff all met at Okahu Bay, enjoyed the morning sun with a hot drink and listened to Sustainable Coastlines Programmes Coordinator Shelley Butt deliver a Love Your Coast presentation.  She talked about the impacts of plastics on the creatures that live in and around the oceans and things we can do to minimise those impacts: refusing, reducing, reusing and recycling.  We talked through the all important health and safety for the day and then got out there.

The site lent itself well to those who wanted to get out onto the beach, scramble over the rock wall or cross the road to the park and the inevitable rubbish in the bushes.  Just an hour scouring the Okahu Bay area and we soon had a pile of rubbish laid out in front of us, garnering surprised comments from passers-by.  Everything from straws, building materials, jandals, loads of plastic bags and food and drink packaging were found, despite Sustainable Coastlines having been at the same spot only two months before.  Many plastic bottles found were either photo-degraded or contaminated – making them unable to put into recycling. We suspect that with the busy road just a stone’s throw away, litter from this ends up in the oceans and then some of it lands back on our shores.

We wrapped up with lunch on the beach in the shade of the pre-blossom pohutukawa, and a team photo with the spoils of our clean-up laid out infront of us.

Thank you to Jay and Tyler for organising their team and the staff of HPE who chose to come down and use their morning making New Zealand a cleaner place.

If you would like to run a clean-up/ team building session with us AND at the same time do a great service for our oceans, contact us at Sustainable Coastlines and we would be happy to chat through your options.