Volunteers roll up their sleeves to clean up Braamfontein Spruit River in Bryanston
World Clean-up Day saw volunteers swap their weekend routines for gloves and litter pickers to tackle pollution along the river.
The spirit of community service was on show in Bryanston on September 20, as volunteers and community members joined forces to clean up the Braamfontein Spruit River for World Clean-up Day.
Hosted by Community Hours, the clean-up brought together volunteers ranging from a five-year-old participant to retired residents, highlighting the role people of all ages can play in protecting their environment.
Read more: Better Bryanston volunteers clean up
The clean-up was held in partnership with The President’s Award, Better Bryanston, Bryanston East Community Forum, ADT, Fidelity Guards, the Paper Packaging Institute of South Africa and other community partners.
“Our future leaders really need to develop a sense of empathy for the communities around those that they potentially live in,” Community Hours CEO Sarah Welton-Blake said. “It’s an amazing thing to see people coming together. Fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, brothers and sisters, coming together in support of having a social impact in a space which is important to them.”
Welton-Blake added that the section of the river was chosen because it was manageable for volunteers and forms part of an area regularly maintained by environmental conservation organisation Hlanzekile Rivers and Oceans Cleaning. “The important thing is that if we can catch sections of the river and keep small sections clean, hopefully, over a duration of time, we’ll be able to do this in incremental pockets and clean the river in its totality.”
Also read: Clean up at Bryanston’s greenbelt
Among those leading the environmental effort was Floyd Nyai, founder of Hlanzekile Rivers and Oceans Cleaning, an organisation that removes plastic and other waste from rivers, aquatic systems and illegal dumping sites.
Nyai said the organisation does not only clean waterways on environmental awareness days, but conducts weekly clean-ups throughout the year. “We’re just playing our part in a global crisis to clean up our environment. We have an upcycling initiative which sees us upcycling some of the waste that we collect into products that have a much longer lifespan. So, the goal is to turn single-use plastics into products that have a much longer lifespan,” he said.
Nyai welcomed the strong turnout, saying the support from different organisations and volunteers showed the community’s commitment to tackling the environmental crisis.
For Welton-Blake, however, the clean-up was a reminder that community involvement starts with finding a cause that matters personally. “Our challenge is always finding things that resonate with you. Find something which you love and which is important, because then you will volunteer relentlessly and regularly and you can build a social impact of which you can be proud,” she said.
Welton-Blake encouraged residents to get involved beyond once-off events, saying communities depend on people being willing to take responsibility and make a difference.
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