日本語↓ This month’s haul: 13.5 kg of rubbish in 1.5 hours. Our clean up was postponed by one week due to the weather. So in the end, we cleaned up on Valentine’s Day! Thank you to the volunteers that came out on this day to have a date with Green Bird . We started at Darling Square, focusing on small pieces of rubbish. As we moved towards Chinatown, we encountered the usual issue – rubbish stuck in planter grates. It is always disappointing to see how much rubbish finds its way into these grates around local trees. I wonder if it is due to direct littering, or rubbish falling off overflowing bins. The drains themselves were also a sight to behold..and all of that rubbish will eventually find its way into Sydney Harbour (I recommend checking out the work Seabin Project does to see how much of our trash is ending up in the sea around Sydney). As usual, we attracted a lot of eyes during the clean. A guy even joked with us, pointing to a tree and saying, “Look, a green bird!”

But that type of attention is also good. We are reminding those around us about the severity of the environmental issues we face, and hopefully encouraging more collective action…Reflecting on the words of a volunteer recently who mentioned the ‘greenbird vision’ he gains after a clean up, I also hope the public starts to notice how much rubbish there really is surrounding them. I think our activities definitely help with this. Sometimes it’s the small pieces that have the largest impact. I look forward to our next clean on Clean Up Australia Day! Won’t you join in too?