THE Esplanade in Mount Martha received special attention last Sunday week (8 October), and it wasn’t just about the popular Around the Bay cycling event.
Volunteers took the opportunity to clean up the busy area while the road was closed for the bike ride and collected 321 kilograms of litter.
While watching the race, 13 volunteers took about 2.5 hours to collect the haul, which beat last year’s clean up by around 80 kilograms.
Much of the waste was soft plastic: bottles, bags, coffee cups and bottles as well as cans, tyres and cigarette butts.
The strangest thing volunteers found was a stair lift that is installed on home staircases to help people with mobility issues.
“The sad part is, for all the effort someone went to dump this, it could have been taken to the scrap metal recycling place, or the tip, for free,” organiser Amy Westnedge said.
First published in the Mornington News – 18 October 2022
