Celebrating nature in river clean-up

A group of volunteers celebrated Woman’s Day with a river clean-up event in Irene, outside Pretoria, yesterday.

Tarryn Johnston, founder of the Hennops Revival organisation, said 501 black bags of rubbish were collected from Sorex Estate in Irene, which the river flows through.

Johnston recently joined forces with the global movement, The Planet Calls – Moving Water Alliance as its SA chairperson.

Johnston and her team of Hennops Revival volunteers have removed almost 1.3 million kilograms of trash from one river alone over the past few years.

“This event was a last-minute decision which we made on Friday and luckily we had a huge amount of support,” she said.

More than 60 volunteers turned up to help clean up the river.

“Working on Woman’s Day means we appreciate what mother nature did for us. She gave birth to all of us,” Johnston said.

The river, Johnston added, had not been looking good over the weekend and was a white-grey colour.

“It’s not a good time of the year for the river because there is no rain diluting all the waste. It has also started warming up so the sludge on the water starts to smell again, too,” she said.

Usually, in the rainy season, the litter was washed down the river but the group was installing a three-phase trapping system to catch big and small items, ranging from tree trunks to small particles, she added.