with me volunteering for a greater good , for our beaches , and our waterways .”
Keith explains that the people who do volunteer don ’ t ask for anything , they feel it is their duty to keep the beaches clean , suggesting that there is a camaraderie that goes beyond pulling rubbish from the sand as everyone worked to ensure that eacxh other was an equal and respected .
In total Keith worked in three locations across eleven days , all on Australia ’ s Cape York Peninsula , retrieving a total of 7.3 tonnes of rubbish . Yet , according to Tangaroa Blue this is just the beginning . To 2018 Tangaroa Blue volunteers had worked on almost 4,000 locations around Australia removing 1,434 tonnes of rubbish , the equivalent of 1,000 average sized cars . Two of the larger clean-ups were after natural disasters , two category 5 cyclones during 2015 . One in Yeppoon and the other at Cape Bedford and retrieved 1.2 tonnes of plastic for every 500 metres of beach .
The same year over 100,000 individual items were removed from the Great Barrier Reef lagoon .
It ’ s a problem that won ’ t go away . We can lobby governments , fight industry , make protests , yet the simplest solution is to look at the way we impact our own environment . As motorcyclists , travellers , just everyday people , we need to look at what we use and discard of with thought . Look at industries that are trying to have influence , an example being Continental Tires who
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