Recently, the Vodafone Foundation engaged Sustainable Coastlines to provide some volunteering opportunities for Vodafone employees. We love it when businesses get in touch to do some work with us, so provide opportunities we did!

An idea for a series of three clean-up events across the country was formed and on Tuesday 22 January 2019, 73 staff from Vodafone’s Auckland offices as well as some family and friends joined Sustainable Coastlines at Milford Beach for a day of volunteering.

The day started with an introduction to the problem of marine debris in the form of a Love Your Coast presentation delivered by Sustainable Coastlines staff Amy Klitscher and Jodi Pretscherer. This presentation has been seen by over 185,000 people in the last 10 years and forms a core part of Sustainable Coastlines’ educational message. The Vodafone team soaked up the information and responded with some very insightful questions. One of the key messages pressed in the Love Your Coast presentation is that it’s actually the small pieces of litter that cause a big problem for sea life, being easy to mistake for food and ingest. This is important because Milford Beach (and many of Auckland’s other North Shore beaches) is strewn with these micro-plastics. They’re easily missed if you don’t take the time to sift through the wrack at the top of the shoreline.

With this knowledge in mind and after an all-important safety briefing, the XX strong team hit the beach, the surrounding park and walkways for the following 1.5 hours. Indeed, many were seen sitting or kneeling down in the sand, pulling piece after piece of microplastic from the beach. Of course, larger items were found as well and after the prescribed clean-up time, about 250 litres of litter had been removed from the coast.

After a delicious pizza lunch, we had intended to run a litter audit on site to really get a good look at what we collected and take a chance to reflect. The wind, however, wasn’t in our favour and was far too strong to empty our litter onto tarpaulins, as usual. So instead, while some departed for the day, about half the crew made their way north to Castor Bay, where we made spotless our second beach for the day.

We want to thank the staff of Vodafone and the Vodafone Foundation for engaging with Sustainable Coastlines on this beautiful day and for putting in such a solid effort. We hope that eyes were opened and take home messages were absorbed and grasped for the long term. Most of all, we hope everyone had fun.

See you next time and Love Your Coast.