Staff Writer
DRIVEN by winds and ocean currents, thousands of plastic and glass bottles, plastic wrappers and cardboard containers have collected at Melkbosstrand along the West Coast.
John Taylor, a member of the Melkbosstrand Ratepayers Association, said the association was in a “constant battle” to curb plastic pollution along its beaches. “A lot of it is swept to sea by the stormwater system of Cape Town and bobs around before settling in huge mounds on the beach. Fortunately there are organisations like Beach Clean Up and the Friends of the Blaauwberg Conservation Area who assist with removal on occasion,” Taylor said.
Negligence and ignorance of the public regarding how to properly discard their waste results in more than one ton of rubbish being collected at only 12 city beaches on a monthly basis.
Greg Player, the director of Beach Clean Up, which re-cruits volunteers to tidy up the 12 beaches stretching from Melkbosstrand to Gordon’s Bay, said beaches would be in a much worse state if they did not run their programme.
Plastic bottles, glass bottles, food containers and cigarette boxes were the most common items discarded.
The organisation had about 200 volunteers who devoted the first Saturday of every month to picking up other people’s discarded rubbish.
“We weigh the rubbish we collect on a regular basis. On average, after every clean-up, the waste consisting of mostly plastic and glass bottles weighs about one ton,” Player said.
Roy Fuller-Gee, chairman of the Friends of Blaauwberg Conservation Area – a registered non-profit organisation consisting of a voluntary group of people concerned with the preservation of the area – said rubbish discarded in waterways always washed up along the coast. That had dire consequences for the environment and marine life, he said.
“Ships are better. We have many foreign objects washing up along the coast. We have found numerous fish tangled between nets and some have washed up dead after choking on plastic,” he said.
Earlier this year, the Cape Times reported that the state of Cape Town’s rivers and waterways had come under the spotlight when 75 intrepid paddlers took part in the fifth annual 27km Peninsula Paddle.
Canoeists and conservationists made their way from Muizenberg to Milnerton, paddling along the Steenberg canal, across Princess Vlei, down the Plumstead canal, the Krom River, Black River, Liesbeeck River, and other rivers, lakes and canals.
Extreme adventurer Braam Malherbe said his experience had been “horrendous in many respects”.
“I was gobsmacked by the amount of pollution and litter in the canals,” he said.