On Sunday the 13th of February 2022 we held a beach clean up from Glencairn Beach to Simon's Town Long Beach: starting from our amazing venue, namely False Bay Yacht Club, where everyone met at 9am.

Team leader: Koen Wouters

All those participating received a large refuse bag, rubber gloves, sun block and a brief on where to clean. Our Beach Cleaners consisted of Koen, Robyn, Marylou (86 years old), Chris, Sue, Tyla (14 years young) & Kallie and their area was mainly Simon's Town Long Beach and the adjoining railway track (not in use during weekends).

They split up into 3 teams: Koen&Robyn&Marylou covering a confined area, Kallie&Chris on the beach and Tyla&Sue along the railway tracks. It soon became clear that Chris would need to join the 2 on the railway side as there was a lot of rubbish clearly visible. It was quite shocking for them to discover the amount of rubbish they did find and to realize that this was most likely just dumped here by beach users.

The rubbish found varied considerably, but this is a list of some of the “most found” items:

- Plastic bottles

- Glass bottles and a lot of broken glass

- Used baby diapers

- Many unused condoms (strawberry flavor was the most popular!)

- Potato crisp packets

- Sweet wrappers

- Sweet packets

- KFC packaging

- Old clothes

- Metal bars

- Overhead electric cable

- Plastic string and cord

- Plastic bottle tops

- Cigarette butts

- Tissues

- Toilet paper (plus a few surprises)

- Tin cans from drinks

- Tin cans from food

- Plastic cutlery

- Loads of thin clear plastic packets

A total of 13.2 kg was collected... All of these items were destined to end up in the ocean and ultimately causing so much damage to the ocean and sea life.

The seven returned to the False Bay Yacht Club with more than a large boot full of bags of rubbish.

They sorted their finds into different categories (for easy disposal) and the bags were then weighed to ascertain the weight of 13.2.

Everyone enjoyed a welcome drink and Boerewors Roll as a well deserved barter :-)

A HUGE thank YOU to our participants: Marylou, Chris, Sue, Kallie, Tyla, Robyn and Koen!