Some Ocean Caring in Manly

Besides the buzzing end of year vibes and the prospect of holidays, there’s always something great about this time of year. Given the chance, it’s a pretty prime time to think about what it is that really means a lot to us.

Seaside Scavenge is all about cleaning up our ocean. We only have one of these beautiful bodies of life to share, so we’ve got to start showing her we care… afterall 70% of the oxygen we breathe comes from the marine plants that she gives life to.

That’s why it was so damn special that the Scavenge was part of Manly’s annual Ocean Care Day. A celebration of all things marine.

On Sunday we got to hang out with just some of the incredible people and bubbling bodies of energy behind awesome efforts combating marine debris pollution, leading the cash-for-container campaign and just doing anything and everything to keep our environment out of human-harms way as possible.

The Scavenge was set-up down at the Southern Stage alongside SO Manly and Plastic Pollution Solutions. We had Captain Plastic leading some very interesting trivia… Did you know that a polyester fleece is made from100% plastic? Maybe go for wool next time hey.

We had a pretty epic day. Over 100 volunteers got involved as well as countless stoked little kids. An amazing team of Scavenge volunteers helped to sort through 62.72kg of litter, 20.79kg of which was able to be recycled. And they definitely were amazing… each and every Scavenge would not be what it is without these legends in green!

We were even separating plastic bottles on behalf of the Sealife Trust to be used as the building materials for a boat aimed to compete the bridge to bay race next February. So thanks to Tim and Rhi for collecting a dozen to keep these guys afloat… they’ve scored a double pass to some free board hire at Aloha Surf Manly.

Another lucky fella with a double pass to board hire at Aloha Surf Manly is Steve. He managed to rescue 9 coffee cups before they went sailing out to sea. Considering there are 1 million coffee cups used every day in Sydney the unfortunate reality is that a lot of them do end up there, plastic lids and all.

There’s nothing like a butt challenge to get everyone down on the sand eyes peeled for those pesky toxic bombs. Over the day we counted 4,166 but there definitely would’ve been more. There was some fierce competition with our winner having conducted 3 individual cleanups to ensure herself first place. Congratulations to Elaine for collecting 520 butts, definitely a well-deserved winner of the 4 Pines Brewery Tour for herself and 3 friends.

By far the oddest and potentially most toxic item pulled in on Sunday was by Olivia and Marie. The owner of it clearly missed the memo that E-cigarettes are actually re-usable but unfortunately like most smokers felt the need to leave it behind in the sand. Good find guys, enjoy your $100 voucher to Daniel San Manly!

With all this hard work, the beach was actually looking pretty clean so people were having to scavenge far and wide to fill their bags. Ricardo and Melissa took on the challenge and made it around to the headland to pull bottles from the shrubbery and for that have scored themselves a $50 voucher to The Plant Room Manly.

Many photos captured the day’s antics but it was Cyn Coco that did it best. She creatively crafted some little guys out of some beach litter… love it! She's landed herself the beautiful One Ocean necklace from Spindrift Collections.

There’s a whole lot of work that goes on behind the scenes in preparation for scavenging… primarily all the clothes collection so just want to say big thanks to @MoreTunesLessTrash aka Harriet Spark for all the help. We managed to get about 286kg of clothing donated across Sydney! Thanks to absolutely everyone that cleared their wardrobes to add some items to the racks, they were well appreciated.

But who was it that collected the most litter? Who was it that gets to go on a Scuba Experience with Dive Centre Manly? Oh of course, how could we forget! Out of the 107 volunteers that registered on Sunday the stakes were high and competition fierce but it was Alexander who managed to collect a total of 510 pieces of litter. We very much hope you enjoy your underwater experience! Hopefully much cleaner this time round!

Thanks everyone that came down and got amongst the fun at Ocean Care Day. It was such a wicked start to summer, an awesome debut on the north-side for the Scavenge and simply splendid to come together with a crew of such active individuals on something that we all love and respect; our ocean. To many more, Manly!