Big Clean Up around the lakes nets great litter results!
Sunday March 1st 2020 was Clean Up Australia Day and 177 people “stepped up to clean up” and helped Springfield Lakes Nature Care (SLNC) to clean up the area around Regatta and Discovery Lakes, and a separate area at Spring Mountain. This was the 5th Clean Up Australia Day event organised by SLNC President Luise Manning, growing from only about a dozen people in 2016, to the numbers seen today.
132 people, including 54 children younger than 13 years volunteered to clean up around the Lakes and surrounding streets, whilst 45 members of the Springfield Malayalee Association (including 25 children) cleaned up the streets of Spring Mountain.
In addition, 3 adult paddlers collected material floating in the two lakes.
All litter collected was brought down to the Discovery Lake carpark for the audit report to be conducted. The rubbish was disposed of in the skip-bin provided by Ipswich City Council (except for the tyres which were disposed of separately as they do not go into landfill).
In comparison to last year’s litter audit, there was a distinct decrease in the number and proportion of drink containers of the type that can be recycled through the COEX “cash for containers” scheme. Anecdotal comments suggest that the number of people littering their neighbourhood by discarding drink bottles whilst walking or driving through has stayed the same, but community and environmentally aware citizens are picking up these bottles and cans before they make it into the natural environment and our lakes. There was also less builders waste (such as polystyrene, PVC pipes and plastic wrapping), probably because almost all building on “The Peninsula” has been completed. Only 3 supermarket/retail bags collected, showing that the plastic bag ban is working.
The dominant form of litter was small and large bits of paper, newspapers, cardboard/polystyrene fast food containers/packaging, and COEX drink containers. There were also plenty of plastic straws, and this needs last item to be the focus of future efforts to reduce plastic in our environment. Unusual items collected this year were 1 bicycle, 2 car tyres, 1 chair and 1 garden hose. Not quite as impressive as last year’s half kayak.
Some 19 full garbage bags of litter were collected, including 10 bags of recyclable COEX containers which were donated to SLNC.
SLNC gratefully thanks all those that turned up to help clean up our neighbourhood, the Springfield and Goodna Girl Guides, Redbank Plains, Goodna and Camira Scouts, Greater Springfield Rotary Club, and the Springfield Malayalee Association.
We would like to thank our sponsors, Lendlease and IGA Springfield for supporting the event and providing the refreshments and fruit and Milton Dick MP for the cake for morning tea. We also thank Ipswich City Council for the funding from the Environmental Grant which helped cover the cost of core flute signs and flyers to promote the event and the provision of a professional first aid officer.
If anyone else would like to donate plastic and glass bottles and aluminium cans to SLNC and help us run environmental events, then please take them to the Night Owl at Spring Lake Metro, or another COEX deposit centre, and using our registration code “C10002285” the funds will be direct credited to SLNC’s bank account.