Volunteers were all excited and turned up as early as 8.30am for registration. Our youngest volunteer at the event is only 6 years old, accompanied by her family. The oldest volunteer was over 70-year-old who learnt about the event the night before and decided to sign up. Another 59-year-old volunteer participated as divers together with his wife to pick up the trash in the waters! Out of the 106 volunteers, we had 32 divers and 74 non-divers at the clean-up.
The Marina Director, James Roy kicked off the Marina Clean Up with a welcome speech followed by safety briefings conducted by Tasrin (Assistant Manager, Marina), Vincent (White Manta Diving), and Sam (ONE°15 Eco Advisor and co-founder of Our Singapore Reefs).
It was great to see many new faces join us for the first time as well as familiar faces back with us again. The volunteers eagerly combed the marina for trash the moment they arrived at the marina armed with scooping nets, gloves, mesh bags and their diving gears.
After approximately 1.5 hours, the Marina Clean Up concluded with the blue bins being wheeled to the sorting area. A total of six main materials – plastic, glass & ceramic, metal, rubber & wood, cloth & paper/ cardboard and lastly mixed materials & other debris items, were differentiated for recycling purposes.
Materials that could be recycled were sorted out and sent for recycling. The remaining trash were disposed of and some of them will be repurposed into art for an upcoming art exhibition.
Some of the volunteers feedbacked that they would love to participate again in similar events and others commented it was a meaningful way to spend a Sunday morning. This was also the third time a mother & son duo are helping at the Marina Clean-up!
A total of 334 items, not limited to a kick scooter, bicycle, traffic cone, tire, boat spare parts, fishing cage, anchor, trolley, and poles had been collected, amounting to a whooping 301kg of trash! Compared to our last clean up in 2019 with a total of 200kg of trash, this was definitely a Sunday morning well spent. After being in the marina for a prolonged period, some of the trash had marine growth on them and with the efforts of Our Singapore Reefs team, we managed to salvage and replanted these marine lives back onto the seabed and nursery frames.
As we celebrate yet another successful marina clean up, we would like to extend our gratitude to all volunteers as well as White Manta Diving, Our Singapore Reefs, Kent Ridge Secondary School, ONE°15 Marina staff and SUTL staff for playing a part for the environment.
