Mother of All Clean Ups volunteer day
Our Christchurch and Dunedin teams volunteered at this year’s Mother of All Clean Ups, an annual initiative to remove rubbish from alongside waterways.
The Mother of All Clean Ups is a Christchurch institution that has grown from 5 groups picking up rubbish along waterways on the day before Mother’s Day in 2015 to 64 community groups, businesses and schools – close to 1,000 volunteers – collecting 2.4 tonnes of rubbish in 2024.
Our Christchurch team got busy at Windsport Park near the Avon-Heathcote Estuary as part of this year’s event, while our Dunedin team expanded the initiative to Otago for the first time and cleaned up a section of the Harbour Cycleway.
We were joined by Shane and Reilly from Save Money Skips, Melitta from Carters and Tandy from Simoson Strong-Tie in Dunedin, filling six big wheelie bins in two hours. Notable finds included a fire extinguisher, a pile of nappies, some tyres, plus plenty of soft plastics and polystyrene.
Thanks to Tanya from the Avon-Heathcote Estuary Ihutai Trust for her advice on running a safe and productive cleanup, we’re keen to do it all again next year!
