Find your local Clean Up Australia group and join in on Sunday 7 March to keep our Blue Mountains beautiful.
There are currently nine groups registered locally which are open to the public and welcome more volunteers:
- Glenbrook Native Plant Nursery
- Bowaga Avenue Blaxland
- Springwood Cemetery
- Plastic-free Blue Mountains Faulconbridge
- Hazo Bike Jumps at Halls Parade
- Lincoln's Rock Wentworth Falls
- Mid Mountains Labor at Wentworth Falls
- Colless Foods in Katoomba, and
- Garguree Bushcare at The Gully, Katoomba.
You can join any of these groups by visiting https://www.cleanupaustraliaday.org.au/join-a-clean-up to register.
Blue Mountains resident, Ilena Downes, has also registered a special youth event targeting rubbish in Glenbrook Gorge to be held Sunday 14 March. This event is supported by Council's Healthy Waterways team and Youth Council. There are prizes on offer for whoever who collects the most rubbish and tasty treats available to keep energy levels up. Young people wanting join in must sign up at the following link: https://www.cleanupaustraliaday.org.au/fundraisers/ilenadownesdownes/lapstone-to-end-of-glenbrook-gorge.
Council is an enthusiastic supporter of Clean Up Australia Day each year, assisting Site Supervisors and providing groups with free disposal of their Clean Up Australia rubbish.
Blue Mountains Mayor Mark Greenhill said: "The impact of the work done on Clean Up Australia Day benefits Blue Mountains residents, visitors and businesses. We are grateful to all our local volunteers donating their time to protect our environment."
This year's Clean Up Australia Day will be a COVID-safe affair with new guidelines in place to ensure the health and safety of volunteers and the broader community. Clean Up events must be compliant with State restrictions and anyone feeling unwell must not attend. Groups are required to split volunteers into groups of 10, in order to adhere to social distancing protocols. All volunteers must check in on the day to help with contact tracing. Clean Up Australia Day has also introduced COVID-safe Clean Up kits that include individual gloves and bags for each volunteer, to ensure no materials are shared, minimising the risk of spread.
Past Clean Up Australia groups volunteering in the Blue Mountains have removed tonnes of waste from bushland and parks. There have even been specialist groups who abseiled below the Three Sisters to keep the world-famous lookout looking its best. Across the Mountains the top three rubbish offenders were cigarette butts, PET bottles and glass bottles.
Clean Up Australia was started by Ian Kiernan AO in 1990 and is the nation's largest community-based environmental event. Over 18.3 million Australian volunteers have donated 36 million hours and removed over 380,000 ute-loads of rubbish from our environment as part of Clean Up Australia activities. Today, Clean Up Australia focuses as much on preventing rubbish entering the environment as it does on removing what has already accumulated.
You can learn more at: https://www.cleanup.org.au/.
Photo: SES volunteers who abseiled below the Echo Point lookout to collect rubbish in 2020.
