EFFORTS to eradicate the filth on the Durban beaches continued on Saturday with the KZN Beach Clean-up rallying their forces on the Virginia Beach. To date the conservationists have removed two tons of trash from the environment.
The partly cloudy day saw 50 locals volunteering two hours of their morning to collect litter along the popular beach.
Their hard work even inspired two vagrants to take part in the monthly clean-up operation, and within an hour the volunteers had collected 35 bags of litter.
At the end of the successful mission Durban North resident and founder, Natalie Gorven said a total of 889kg of trash had been removed from the beach.
However, she said this had not been their biggest collection. Last month 97 volunteers collected 1 455kg of rubbish along the shores of the Beachwood Mangroves.
What’s more, she said this year they had collected a grand total of two tons of waste during three monthly clean-ups.
“This totally blew last year’s record out of the water. In our 12 clean-ups last year we collected 1.78 tons. This year we have collected two tons of rubbish,” she said.
According to Gorven the sudden spike is due to both an increase in littering and the amount of volunteers who have joined their cause.
“We still get loads of people who say: ‘What is the use? Tomorrow the rubbish will be back on the beaches.’ However, we have definitely seen that there are more people who have begun to realise that every peace of rubbish we collect is one less piece that ends up in the ocean,” she said.
The April clean-up will be held on 16 April at the La Mercy Beach from 9am to 11am. All of the collected rubbish is sorted and recycled.
GALLERY: See if you were snapped by our photographer at the KZN Beach Clean-up at the Virginia beach on Saturday.
