‘Take Action - Clean Your Beach’ is one of 19 initiatives WWF-New Zealand, in partnership with the Tindall Foundation, is supporting this year through its Community Conservation Fund.
The project, led by Our Seas Our Future Charitable Trust, supports schools, community groups, and organisations to clean their local beaches by providing free clean-up kits. So far this year, more than 3000 people have taken part.
The kits include gloves, Ecobags, leadership acknowledgement prizes and event planning resources.
Plastic and marine pollution is a mounting global crisis and requires urgent action. Plastic chokes and entangles marine life, and when plastic in the ocean breaks down, it also creates smaller pieces known as microplastics that are ingested by sea creatures.
School students from across the motu are joining beach clean-up efforts. That includes a group of Year 8 students from Auckland’s Orewa College known as the ‘Nature Ninjas’.
The ‘ninjas’ recently used a clean-up kit supplied by Our Seas Our Future to clean their local estuary and stop rubbish, particularly plastics, from flowing into the ocean and harming local sea life.
A spokesperson for the Nature Ninjas, says: "We’re really happy that we could stop all that rubbish from going into the ocean. It was a bonus that we had fun along the way, too.”
Schools from all over Aotearoa have participated in the Take Action - Clean Your Beach project. So far, schools and community groups have collected over 390kg of waste from our beaches.
Our Seas Our Future also provides school educational resources (years 1-13) to further support climate action education as well as resources on how to plan, implement and evaluate a clean-up event. More information is available here.
The WWF Community Conservation Fund supports local communities to run projects that conserve and restore Aotearoa’s natural environment, while also educating New Zealanders about its importance.
Applications for the Community Conservation Fund 2024 round close on 15 September.