Australia’s longest-running clean-up campaign, Clean up Australia Day will hold their 2021 event on Sunday, March 7th. TOMRA Cleanaway will be stepping up to Clean up and take care of our environment with our scheme partners.
Business Clean up Day in 2020 was an opportunity for the TOMRA Cleanaway team to Step up to Clean up with our Return and Earn Scheme partners, including Exchange for Change and TOMRA Collections Solutions Australia. Our efforts were focused on urban pollution in the beautiful Sydney Olympic Park precinct mangroves and surrounding parkland.
The Return and Earn container deposit scheme was launched in December 2017 as NSW’s biggest-ever litter reduction initiative as drink container litter represented 44% of the volume of the litter stream in NSW. As network operator for the scheme, TOMRA Cleanaway is committed to making the environment here in NSW better each and every day, and pitching in to clean up is just one way we are making a positive contribution.
Our clean up in 2020 was an eye-opener, but pleasingly there was one type of item clearly missing from the litter pulled out of the mangroves and park – drink containers!
Polystyrene foam and fishing line were the most prolific across the sites the clean up occurred. Michelle Mandl-Keating, TOMRA Cleanaway’s Communication & Engagement Manager said of the clean up “It never ceases to amaze me what ends up as litter. Car parts, whole esky’s and fishing gear amongst urban mangroves in Sydney was certainly not expected. I was quite disturbed at the volume of polystyrene we collected– there is clearly a link with lack of recyclability and an item being present in the litter stream.”
In 2021 TOMRA Cleanaway is again looking forward to helping keep our beautiful environment litter free and clean by ‘Stepping up to Clean up’ with our scheme partners!
About Clean Up Australia
Clean Up Australia was founded over 30 years ago in response to an increasingly visual pollutant – litter. It is hard to believe that this initiative began as the inspiration of one man, Ian Kiernan. An avid sailor, Ian was shocked and disgusted by the pollution and rubbish that he continually encountered in the oceans of the world. Taking matters into his own hands, Ian organised a community event with the support of a committee of friends, including co-founder Kim McKay AO.
This simple idea ignited enthusiasm and desire among the local community to get involved and make a difference. And surely if a capital city could be mobilised into action, then so could the whole nation! And so it was that Clean Up Australia Day was born in 1990.
Clean Up Australia inspires and empowers communities to clean up, fix up and conserve our environment.
What was started thirty years ago, by an “average Australian bloke” was very a simple idea to make a difference in his own backyard. From these beginnings, Clean Up has now become the nation’s largest community-based environmental event.
Australia’s waste challenges can’t be solved in just one day, so over the past three decades, Clean Up Australia has evolved into an organisation that works with community, government and businesses to provide practical solutions to help us all live more sustainably every day of the year.
Today Clean Up is focussed as much on preventing rubbish from entering our environment as it is on removing what has already accumulated.
To find out more about Clean Up Australia, visit here.
