Hout Bay is a relatively small town in the Western Cape, South Africa. It is about 20 km away from Cape Town city center and right behind the very famous Table mountain tourist attraction. Hout Bay Harbour is famous for recreational fishing and has a number of restaurant facilities within close proximity. It is therefore realistic to assume that the most contributors of waste would be fishing and restaurant packaging.
Our beach cleanup was conducted just after level 2 lockdown in South Africa which had one of the stricter COVID-19 restrictions imposed. In fact, the cleanup took place within a few weeks of the beach being open to the public and the very first sunny weekend since the easing of the lockdown. So it was essentially everybody's official first day back at the beach, needless to say, we were not expecting to collect much debris right?
A total of 75Kg was collected, with about 15 volunteers over a 2hr period. Granted it was a not a lot of debris collected, as per our expectations. What was interesting though was the waste composition of plastics and other litter being 50/50. A closer look into the items showed that yes indeed, restaurant packaging including straws and polystyrene cups were a major contributor, but one surprising significant contributor was cigarette buds. These cigarette buds , also locally known as 'stompies' were all over the beach. Even though there was a general awareness of waste impact among locals in the area, we got a sense that people didn't regard stompies as actual waste.
So the next time you go out in Hout Bay, remember to ask for recyclable packaging and if you can do without a straw, please refuse to take it. Also, leave your stompies in an ashtray or keep them with you until you find a bin to dispose of them properly, just like you're already doing with other litter!
P.S. Shout out to Stellenbosch and University of Cape Town students who came and made the cleanup much fun!!!.
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