Although Broome’s postcards will usually display the pristine Cable Beach or the crystal clear water, it’s not without its fair share of litter.
An anxiety-inducing truth is: litter can pile up wherever you are in the world. Us humans can struggle to leave areas without a trace.
Sometimes it’s the accidental piece of plastic flying from your car on the highway, or the old ‘no room at the (b)inn’ scenario, but it’s important to clean up as we go; find time to clean up some particularly litter-filled parts of the world; use biodegradable materials as much as we can. The more we can do, the better. That’s how we get in front of an ever-growing issue, rather than staying behind with wrappers flying into our faces.
Organisations like Keep Australia Beautiful (KAB) remind us that all you need is a few buckets, a couple of bin bags, a few hours and a loaned skip (thanks, Broome Shire) to make an impact on your section of the world.
This is exactly what the team at Kimberley Care Group did today. Read on to find out more.
Keep Australia Beautiful: what they do and how you can help
KAB promotes the sense of community in terms of cleaning up Australia. It’s about a team effort, always, as that’s what will get the job done fastest as well as encourage others to get involved.
As a leading not-for-profit organisation, they work to inspire Australians to keep the country clean and – you guessed it – beautiful. They also provide education through Eco-Schools programs throughout Australia.
But that’s not all, to further ignite a passion in the community, they lean heavily into the data. Statistics of what is found, brand data and in-depth audits of site clean-up let communities make informed decisions about how they can improve the current waste prevention initiatives.
This encourages local community members (like us!) and local government councils to make a change based on real, tangible evidence of environmental concerns and then focus on action such as infrastructure placement and education campaigns.
This is what makes the programs so impactful. When the problem is addressed with stats, we can’t just turn a blind eye to it. With KAB, we can take real action on litter and prioritise waste prevention.
We adopted-a-spot and you can, too!
Today: the 8th August, 2023, some team members and clients from Kimberley Care Group combined forces with Keep Australia Beautiful. We even had some extra special guests from Albany come and lend a hand. As they usually spend their time working on waste prevention and litter-picking, they were the perfect group to join in (they even brought their own pick-up tools).
We adopted a spot (chose an area to clean) on Louis Street, which is where our community Hub lives, Forrest Street and Dora Street. And, we got to work.
A whole team effort saw us filling up bags and buckets with all kinds of litter. You don’t get more rewarding steps than litter-picking-steps.
We have now adopted these streets in a clean-up initiative, so let’s keep them clean, people! This is through KAB’s Adopt-A-Spot program which is open for many other businesses all throughout Australia.
If you want to get involved, head to their website and let them know you’d like to Adopt-A-Spot in your local area.
The results
This is what we ‘rescued’ from the streets today:
- 50kg of litter collected
- This includes 11kg of containers (for Containers for Change) which have now been saved from landfill
Additional items to the 50kg (which is a lot of wrappers and pieces of cardboard, by the way):
- 6 tyres
- 2 tyre rims
- A shopping trolley
- large bits of foam mattress
- metal piping
- 59 community newspapers
It’s initiatives like this that reminds us not to take the beauty of Broome for granted, as well as how easy it is to make a difference with only a few hours.