At the time of writing, it is Volunteers' Day where we recognise all those Kiwis who volunteer and contribute to our communities.
Ideally, everyone should contribute some of their time as a volunteer to the many worthy causes from helping the local sports teams, aiding those with disabilities, cleaning up our environment or in some way giving back some time for others.
My pet cause is served through my position as a trustee of Sea Cleaners – a wonderful organisation started by enthusiast Hayden Smith when only in his twenties. Sea Cleaners basically just does what its name implies. Using volunteers, we collect huge volumes of rubbish from our streams and harbours.
Under Hayden’s relentless leadership, Sea Cleaners has grown to have several boats with skippers who handle teams of mostly young volunteers who enjoy a day out fishing tons of various types of rubbish kindly donated by lazy citizens biffing their plastic wrappings, bottles and all sorts of junk, including tyres and shopping trolleys, into our marine system. Sea Cleaners goes into schools to teach young Kiwis not to mimic their parents by throwing stuff away, but to actively clean up our streams.
The areas covered now extend beyond Auckland into other provinces and even as far as Hawaii. The recent floods showing drains blocked with plastic waste only highlights the horrid truth that plastic is so widespread that it is entering the food chain and the volumes of plastic in the sea is now by far the biggest oil based pollution, far out-sizing such well publicised oil spill disaster such as from Exxon Valdez.
So the Greens need to be hammering these green environmental issues and casting their influence across all levels of society, instead they seem to be ignoring the environment in favour of social engineering. They have become Green with envy, rather than Green for the environment.
I applaud the Green’s stand in various environmental issues but I am saddened by their change of focus. It is no wonder they are being called the Watermelon Party, green on the outside and bright red in the middle.
What with climate change, storm damage and plastic waste, who now is going to champion these issues which extend way beyond rich versus poor. We all need to get involved, so come on readers, volunteer, especially for environmental groups such as Sea Cleaners. We could do with more help so check our website and volunteer.
Climate change will cause disruption but won’t kill us but micro plastics getting into the food chain probably will. (Wayne Brown)
www.seacleaners.com
Mayor of Auckland www.facebook.com/WayneBrown4Auckland
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Published 3 July 2023