On a stormy spring morning on Saturday 3 September, 30 members of The Landing team pulled on their wet-weather gear and headed out to the bays and coves of the Purerua Peninsula to as part of the annual International Coastal Cleanup. The ICC is a global clean-up led by the Ocean Conservancy that has been running for three decades, with volunteers in countries around the world participating each September to tackle one of the ocean’s most pervasive problems – plastic.
“Cleaning up beaches is a project that we undertake regularly at The Landing – we do it several times a year – but this year we decided to officially join the International Coastal Cleanup,” says Tim Robinson, operations manager of The Landing.
Starting from Wairoa Bay, the team worked their way around the whole coastline at The Landing, from Rangihoua Bay beneath the Marsden Cross, and out to some of the closer islands in the gulf. At the end of several hours of hard work, they had collected well over 100kg of rubbish.
“There were all sorts of things in the mix,” says Tim. “Lots of bits of plastic that break away from oyster farms, batons, fishing gear, old tyres, plastic bags and wrappers, an old fish finder. Because we’ve done these clean-ups before, we knew that one thing we were likely to find a lot of was plastic pegs, so we ran a competition to see who could collect the most plastic pegs. Two people tied for first place with 33 pegs each.”
Afterwards, the team were rewarded for their efforts with a roast lamb lunch cooked by The Landing chef, as well as samplings of the new vintage from The Landing Wines.
