International Beach Cleanup for Doepies
The #Weskus looks after it's beaches
It’s almost International Coastal Cleanup Day! With just five days to go until the 17th of September, we wanted to share the clean-ups are team will be attending across Cape Town.
WESKUS CLEANUP
A brief overview
Each year, it is scheduled to be celebrated on the third Saturday of the month of September.
Plastic pollution is extremely hazardous to marine life, killing thousands of creatures. International Coastal Cleanup Day encourages people to help limit this problem by cleaning up litter that has been scattered all over our beaches.
Region: West Coast
Why Your Participation Matters
So, why is cleaning up trash from our coasts and communities so vital to our environmental health? Marine debris is one of the biggest threats to the health of our ocean and sea life, and scientists estimate that plastic pollution accounts for up to 80% of marine litter. Ideally, we would like to stop plastic at the source before its impacts our environment, but we also have to combat the massive amounts of plastic already in our ecosystem.
In fact, virtually all the plastic that has ever been created still exists today in some form. Instead of biodegrading (like organic materials), plastic photodegrades or breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces as it’s exposed to the elements. These small pieces persist in the environment even once the pieces (known as microplastics) are too small for the naked eye to see.
When plastic ends up in the ocean, marine life often mistakes it for food and eats it. Not only does that threaten the life of the animal, but it also ends up on your plate when you order sushi or other seafood. According to UNESCO, marine life can also become entangled in plastic that ends up in the ocean, causing the death of more than a million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals every year!
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