The grade 4 classes from Port Melb Primary did a fantastic job cleaning New Beach in Port Melbourne for about 30 minutes today!  They collected 3 bags of rubbish (approximatley 9kg) which mainly consisted of small fragments of hard plastic.  They know how important it is to remove these so our seabirds don't ingest them.  Big thanks to these students, their teachers, parents and BeachPatrol volunteers for participating in this worthwhile activity.  

What a pleasure to have a group of 65 international high school students from Taiwan come along to clean up St Kilda beach on February 1st!

Whilst Council had mechanically cleaned early in the morning, the machines miss a lot of the small plastic fragments. These are dangerous if birds, fish or other animals ingest them, so it was great that students removed 5 kg of little pieces. Our 🐧🐧🐧 and 🦈🦈🦈 will be safer now.

Catch of the day was a buoy, weighing 1.5 kg. Students were amused to find a pair of undies too. 

The clean up gave students a little insight into the culture of volunteering we encourage in Australia. 

Thank you to SAIC consultant Julie for reaching out to us. 

In wet and windy conditions on Wednesday 29 and Thursday 30 November, two groups of Year 8 students helped to clean up St Kilda Beach. 

The weather prevented a detailed audit of litter categories, so students counted food wrappers. They reported a staggering 900 wrappers. Imagine just how many there are on bay beaches, day after day, year after year! 

In all, these students removed 27 kg of rubbish that included lots of soft plastic fragments, microplastics, a measuring tape reel, a dummy, vape canisters, cigarette butts and a length of shipping rope. 

Awesome effort! Well done Melbourne Grammar.

What a great class from Emerald Secondary College helping with a beach clean up at Sandringham today! These Year 9 and 10 students are an Environmental Science class. On a cool, windy day (less than ideal beach weather), they got straight down to business collecting rubbish from the vegetation and along the beach.

They were very focussed on the task, logging their collections on the Litter Stopper app so the data could go straight into the database, that will then directly upload into the Victorian Government Litter Watch database. They recorded hundreds of plastic items. The main litter types were small soft plastics (104), large and small hard plastics (90 each), lolly wrappers (84) and polystryrene (37). The class even did a further cleanup of the dog beach after their lunch. Bonus! A couple of items to note: a glow stick (commonly used by fishers to attract fish at night), polytwine fragments (did these come from boats?), a plastic ball smaller than ping-pong (the remains of a Christmas decoration?), tile spacers, soy sauce fish lids and other sauce bubbles.

Though the collection was just 5 kg by weight, the large number of pieces collected offers important protect for the marine life whose habitat is just offshore: seabirds, fish and dolphins will not ingest these pieces all now safely binned. Students found a sleeping bag too but were thoughtful enough to leave it, thinking it may belong to a rough sleeper.

Well done Emerald Secondary College. Thank you all.

Seventeen students spent 45 minutes picking up litter and collected 14kgs of rubbish from Elm Rd in Glen Iris today.  They also did a full audit with a total of 744 items counted including 235 small soft plastic fragments, 107 small hard plastic fragments and 56 food wrappers.  This was the final of four cleans by the students done this year.  Thanks for helping stop this litter from getting into our waterways and possibly being ingested or entangling seabirds and other marine life. 

On Thursday 14th September, students from the Year 12 VCAL class led a clean up around a local shopping strip and parkland bordering a wetland, Darius Terrace precinct, South Morang. Students had researched the impacts of plastic pollution on the environment, creatures and humans. They had also developed an understanding of the connections of overuse of plastics to the problem of climate change. They were really well-prepared, having determined a local litter hotspot and the safety tips we needed to follow. Student leaders had conducted trial clean ups and had practised data entry using the Litter Stopper app.

Overall, the students collected 21 kg of rubbish, including a shopping trolley dragged from the bank of the wetland. Most numerous were cigarette butts (almost 1000), drink bottles and cans (78) and food wrappers (77). In total, students removed and recorded almost 1500 items of litter and ensured this harmful waste was disposed of properly.

Fantastic planning and a great effort in their final week of secondary schooling. Congratulations to these young people - we need others to follow their lead.

In an hour, twelve students from Sacre Coeur help to remove 5.5kgs of rubbish from the Gardiners Creekcreek bed and surrounding area today.   Some of the items counted includd 90 large size fragments of soft plastic, 400 pieces of polystyrene, 11 plastic drink containers and 7 food wrappers.  This is the 3rd of 4 cleans conducted by the students this year.  Great team effort!! 

Two VCE Outdoor Education and Environment classes, 35 students in all, took on the task of clearing a lot if litter from a section of Merri Creek near their school. They powered through the job, removing 72 kg of rubbish, most of it still on the creek banks and up in the riparian vegetation where it had become entangled in the floods of October 17 2022, nine months ago!. 

Apart from bags full of soft plastics, plastic bottles and cans, students pulled out a folding sunlounge, an office chair, a "witch's hat" cone, golf balls, tennis balls, a soccer ball, and outside a building site they picked up dumped tapware and polypipe electrical conduit.

Fantastic effort by these young people. 

17 students came out today for a beach clean at St Kilda.   It was low tide and there had not been much rain in the past week which meant not much plastic rubbish washing around.  However, still a great effort with total weight over 6 Litter Stopper entries was 8 kg, and 270 categorised items plus non-plastic rubbish from this beach that had been freshly cleaned by council machines. 

In 30 mins, these students cleaned along the Gardiners Creek banks, under the Solway Bridge, and collected 

400 large pieces polystyrene, 400 small pieces of polystyrene (estimate only), 60 pieces of foam

50 pieces of plastic (shredded bags/wrappers)

40 plastic bottles, 18 cans (many too dirty to recycle), 1 glass bottle

36 golf balls, 15 balls (tennis/ping pong)

10 plastic soy sushi fish

9 lids (coffee cups/drink bottle lids)

5 nerf gun bullets

2 spoon. 2 plates

2 masks

2 spray can

2 plastic straws

2 plastic take-away sauce packs

1 frisbee

1 tetra pack

1 coat hanger

1 number plate

Many hands make light work.

Thank you to 3145 Love Our Street and Love Our Street 3146 Glen Iris for co-ordinating and helping out on the day.