Cleaning up: St Pat’s grade 2 pupils Chloe Kinnane and Caitlin Hubble check how much rubbish they’ve collected. PICTURE: JEREMY BANNISTER
Tomorrow volunteers from around Ballarat will come together to make the city a little bit cleaner – one empty drink can and at a time.
Clean Up Australia Day will see teams of volunteers tackle litter problems around Ballarat, including at Wendouree, Delacombe and Ballarat East.
At Lake Esmond, 31 volunteers are already registered to attend Sarah Straga’s “clean up” site, which was envisaged by her five-year-old son, Ashley.
“Ashley loves going to Lake Esmond and most of all he loves hand-feeding the ducks,” she said on the Clean Up Australia Day website.
“Ash gets very upset about the amount of litter scattered around the parkland area and regularly takes it upon himself to collect litter left behind by others.”
Ms Straga said her son said the volunteer group should “clean up for the duckies” on Sunday.
In 2012 an estimated 591,400 volunteers cleaned up 16,169 tonnes at 7363 sites right across Australia.
This year in Ballarat, there are almost 20 sites dotted throughout the city where people can join and help clean up the environment.
Although tomorrow is Clean Up Australia Day, yesterday was the Schools’ Clean Up Day, with St Patrick’s Primary School venturing out into their neighbourhood to kick things off.
In total, 29 pupils from prep through to year six took part in the excursion, which involved a competition to see who could collect the most rubbish.
Environmental sciences teacher Thea Hubble said the student representative council, environmental captains and school captains took part in the excursion.
“We thought this was a great way to get out into the community and to clean up the local streets,” she said.
jordan.oliver@fairfaxmedia.com.au