Community
31 October, 2023
Beach clean reaps 600kg
NEARLY 60 Cairns and Cassowary Coast community members volunteered with global environmental conservation organisation Parley by removing almost 600kg of washed-up plastic and other marine debris at Cowley Beach.
The cleanup was supported, funded, and assisted by a large number of local and national organisations, such as Mandubarra Aboriginal Land and Sea Rangers, Cassowary Coast Regional Council, Friends of Cassowary Coast Local Marine Advisory Committee, Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service, Tangaroa Blue’s Reef Clean, Australian Defence Force and Parley Australia.
Cowley Beach Caravan Park managers Les and Deb Smith also organised accommodation for the cleanup crew, even donating barbecue lunches to refuel participants after long hot mornings in the sun.
Parley Australia Executive Assistant Belinda Flanders said it was critical to realise that during clean-ups volunteers saw turtles, dugongs, sharks, rays, whales and dolphins.
“We find plastic containers with shark bites in them,” she said.
Ms Flanders said there was a challenge to managing waste with the majority of the marine plastic debris being around Northern Australia, and ways to locally process the waste, with all the facilities being located in the south.
“We can easily remove it from the beach, but there is not yet one solution for Parley to effectively process the material locally,” she said.
“It's not so much a struggle as a challenge.”
“We care and think deeply about how the material will be used next.”
