The clean-up crew that collected more than 300kg of rubbish along the Onerahi Foreshore on Saturday.
The clean-up crew that collected more than 300kg of rubbish along the Onerahi Foreshore on Saturday.
Some people don't mind dumping their rubbish anywhere they can, but several Whangarei communities are fighting back and picking up dumped trash.
Members of the Onerahi community, supported by people from Greens Whangarei and Northland Geocachers, took to the Onerahi Foreshore on Saturday to do a clean-up.
Organiser Nic Connop said the group collected more than 300kg of rubbish.
Some of the rubbish collected from Onerahi Foreshore on Saturday including plastic-coated parking tickets
And last Wednesday 70 Year 2 and 3 pupils from Morningside School did their own community clean-up, walking from the school to the Loop Walkway at the Town Basin and picking up almost 10 large rubbish sacks of trash along the way.
Mr Connop said the amount of trash collected at Onerahi shocked volunteers, with all types of rubbish dumped on the foreshore or washed up, including plastic-coated parking tickets, tyres, a board game, a woman's corset and an internal door from a house.
''It's heartbreaking really to see it all,'' Mr Connop said.
''Most of what we found could be recycled and the rest should just be dumped properly so it doesn't cause any environmental issues. [The 25 bags of rubbish dumped in Otaika River over the weekend] would have ended up in the Whangarei Harbour and possibly on Onerahi Foreshore and we don't want that.''
Year 2 and 3 pupils from Morningside School start picking up rubbish while walking to Whangarei Town Basin.
However, it was pleasing to see such a great response from the community to cleaning up the foreshore. Recreation Services disposed of the trash too.
''It's all about keeping New Zealand beautiful and there is no excuse for throwing your rubbish away like that,'' he said.
Gina Kitchen, one of three teachers in charge of the Team Pukeko Year 2 and 3 pupils at Morningside, said the youngsters came up with the clean-up idea and organised the event.
''We'd been talking about the power of one. One person or one group, being able to make a change.
Some of the trash the Morningside pupils collected.
"They noticed there was a bit of rubbish around outside the school so thought they'd look at the wider issue of rubbish in the community and they decided we'd walk from the school to the Loop and collect rubbish along the way,'' she said.
By the time the pupils got to Toll Stadium they had filled six big black rubbish sacks and had to call for a teacher from the school to pick them up because they could not carry them.
There were a lot of empty alcohol bottles and cans, but they found very little rubbish at the Town Basin or on the Loop walkway.
Ms Kitchen said the youngsters were shocked at how much trash they found and felt people needed to be tidier in their community.
