Together at 10am, Barefruit Marketing took part in the Business Clean Up that is held nation-wide on February 26th. The business cleaned up the Richmond River with their white and yellow bags and gloves. Each team member searched along the foreshore collecting rubbish around the picnic tables, public amenities and within the landscaped gardens surrounding the communal area.
The Barefruit team accumulated an immense amount of litter, ranging from food wrappers to disposable coffee cups, bottle top caps and the most reported was the notorious cigarette butt, which notably was also the most commonly reported littered item found by Clean Up Australia Day volunteers Australia wide last year, in 2018.
“We have a feeling the most commonly reported littered item will be the same in 2019, they were everywhere - we must have collected 500 butts in 20 minutes” Barefruit Marketing’s Agency Manager Sara Davis says.
“The Clean Up Australia Day campaign is a great initiative - it’s a simple way you can clean up, fix up and conserve our greatest resource, so we felt it was right for our business to jump on board to help keep Australia beautiful, right here in Ballina.”
“Clean Up Australia provides businesses with a starter kit, which included everything we would need, including all the necessary items needed to collect the rubbish safely and efficiently, such as bags for rubbish and recycling, thick gloves, a sharps container and a supervisor's high vis vest. The website also provides workplace posters, thank you certificates and an end of clean up report for us to fill out,” she continues.
The Clean Up Australia charity is working alongside Guinness World Records to create a category for the most employees engaged in an environmental activity at any one time and hope to launch its formal record attempt in 2020.
“We are encouraging all Australian businesses, regardless of size, to rise to the challenge to help formalise this as an official entry in Guinness World Records,” Terrie-Ann Johnson says.
Clean Up Australia began back in 1989 and are celebrating 30 years this year. The idea came to fruitition when an Australian man had a simple idea to make a difference in his own backyard, Sydney Harbour, little did he know, this simple idea would become the nation’s largest community-based environmental event. The first Clean Up Australia Day was in 1989 and was originally named Clean Up Sydney Harbour Day, more than 40,000 Sydney residents came along and donated their time and energy to clean up the harbour.
The following year, the official, Clean Up Australia Day was born, 300,000 volunteers turned up and have steadily increased each year since. Last year an estimated 590,000 volunteers registered. Australians have now devoted more than 32 million hours towards the environment through Clean Up Australia Day and has collected over 344,000 tonnes of rubbish from over 170,000 sites nationwide.
If you were unable to participate in the Business Clean Up, it’s not too late to get involved in the main Clean Up Australia Day event, held on March 3rd, local communities nationwide have organised events, to search for your closest event visit www.cleanupaustraliaday.org.au to be a part of the Clean Up, contact your local council by phone to find out more. Or, put in your calendar to make sure you register for next year’s event so you can be a part of the World Record Attempt.
