CTEET (Cape Town Environmental Education Trust) supports over 30 registered Eco-Schools across Cape Town. The majority of these schools are from low-income, disadvantaged communities on the Cape Flats.
This year, for World Cleanup Day, CTEET partnered with WESSA to host a beach cleanup in Muizenberg, Cape Town. Around 200 people attended the event, including over 120 learners from 9 of our supported Eco-Schools. CTEET feels that it is very important for the learners to get involved in action days such as this because it gives them a chance to actively play a role in environmental protection. It also drives home the real-world impact of some of the things that they are learning about – like the harmful impact that plastic has on our marine life and the effects of littering. This is especially significant this year as CTEET has run a number of educational day programmes around issues such a waste, plastic pollution and water with our Eco-Schools. Joining forces with a big group of other environmentally-conscious peers and role models also inspires the young environmental champions to keep standing up for nature.
We worked on about a 2km long stretch of beach, and the learners spend about 1.5 hours actively collecting waste from the beach. The item that was most found was cigarette butts, followed closely by straws and bottle tops. Interesting finds were a dead gull caught in fishing gut, a TV screen and a whole tyre.
Story provided by CTEET
