Masks, murderers and makeovers – who’s doing Clean Up Australia Day this March?

Lookout – your waterways are now lurking with ghostly disposable masks and murderous bits of plastic (well, murderous to the birds, fish, turtles and platypus who eat them)… can you give your waterway a makeover into a nice place to paddle again?

Clean Up Australia Day is fast approaching – March 6 is the day! With ¾ million other Australians cleaning up, we encourage clubs or groups of paddlers to make the most of it and organize a clean-up paddle for your club or group. It’s the easiest day to get new people to join in and make a big impact on your waterway, and its needed now more than ever with all those extra masks, gloves and wipes going into the water.

This year we aim to get more clubs/groups of paddlers participating – last year was 9, can we get 13 (150% increase)?

Here’s what your club/group will get:

• Listing on the Clean Up Australia Day Paddle Australia hub page (see cleanupaustraliaday.org.au/paddle)
• Baggage scales to weigh your rubbish – just ask us (email bron@paddlensw.org.au)
• Free kit from Clean Up Australia Day (gloves, rubbish collection bags made from corn starch, mini first aid kit, sharps contained, high vis vest etc)
• Chance to win a prize/award – best effort of a club/group – you need to send us your results and photos to be in the comp (small groups of people still count – you might still be putting in a relatively big or novel effort).
• Sense of satisfaction for cleaning up your patch, and social cred among your members and community
• Potentially more members for your club or group!

All clubs/groups doing Clean Up Australia Day events (which don’t have to be on the exact day)  – please email us the details of your event asap so we can add them to the hub page. This way, any paddlers can look up clean up paddles near them.

To make it easy, we’ve done a lot of the work for you with our 10-step ‘How to Organise a Clean Up Paddle’ guide, and a risk assessment for clean up paddles. See nsw.paddle.org.au/environment/resources AND remember, a clean up event can be just two people – simple is still sweet and significant (the SSS principle – replacing KISS in times of Covid 😉).

Afterwards – send us your stats!! Best if you can use the Litter Stopper app, but otherwise email us your results (no. of participants, no. of 12L bags collected, kgs of rubbish collected – ask us to send some scales).

We’re looking forward to seeing stealth and sleuthing to get those evils bits of plastic and rubbish out of our waterways!