For the past month Taryn Burns and her daughter, Savannah from Southbroom have had a pet plastic project.

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It was to see how many of those pesky (mainly) red plastic throwaway weed-eater trimming cord pieces they could pick up off the ground on their early morning jogging route around Southbroom.

They jogged (and did many squats picking up the pieces) for about five kilometres daily over a period of one month using the same route and found 283 single pieces of the plastic hazard, which equates to one every 500m, which had just been carelessly discarded.

“Each piece is about 20cm long. The pieces end up being washed into the drains and then ultimately out to sea. This is just one simple example of single use plastic that gets discarded without us even noticing – imagine what else is out there right under our noses and we don’t even notice that it ends up in our beautiful oceans,” said Taryn.

“We hope that this will make garden services and private gardeners more aware of the problem, and encourage them to pick up after themselves.”

Taryn has decided to build a sculpture from them which they will eventually auction off to raise funds for their initiative.  She urges everyone to pick up these pieces which will be used for the sculpture.

Yolande Goldswain has taken up the challenge.

“We started with these cords and this is what we picked up in half an hour on our morning walk along Orange Rocks Road. A bit of a shock to think how much of it is still out there,” said Yolanda.

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