Picking up rubbish doesn't exactly float my boat, but knowing how much Jill cared for the environment and also being an item from her original list, I wanted to complete this one for her. I came across this cleanup event through Conservation Volunteers Australia and being the cleanup was along beautiful Shoal Point Beach, a beach I'm sure Jill would of loved, it seemed the perfect event for me to do. So I volunteered 2 hours of my Sunday morning to help.
During my rubbish scavenge i came across condom wrappers, beer bottles & cans, a couple of swim bottoms, a child's hat, around 5 single shoes, some sort of kids blow up floaty, a cooler bag and all types of plastic wrappers you could imagine. Put simply, people are pigs. I was quickly able to fill three bags and also found a mass of construction barrier mesh, the kind that looked like it would strangle turtles if it was to get in the ocean.
Despite myself and the other couple of volunteers collecting the amount of rubbish we did, I'm pleased to say there was actually less rubbish found than what I would have thought. The organisers were not surprised at this though because they told me they did a massive cleanup in the same spot a year ago and they collected 400kgs of rubbish! So it was at least encouraging to hear that it hasn't reverted back to a dumping ground.
I can't say I'll be out volunteering every other weekend, but I hope to keep my eye out in the future for further events where I might be free to lend a hand again.
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