Our Warrnambool group leader Colleen was commenting on the soft plastic waste issue after the demise of the drop of points at grocery stores across Australia. 

3147 LOS mentioned in this news letter for picking up local litter on CUAD.

Read the article here.

Ross Headifen was invited to talk on this show for 30 minutes on the issue of soft plastics in Australia.

A new generation of volunteers will be Warrnambool's beaches this CUAD.   Along with regular teams of helpers, a new project is encouraging people from multicultural and community groups who have not volunteered before.  

Our Warrnambool group leader Colleen, was mentioned in this article in theguardian.com.  It was an article by the Australian Academy of Sciences saying there needed to be  Call for urgent overhaul of 'astronomical' plastic pollution.

The article said too much reliance was made on volunteers and not enough sounds science put on the problem to quantify for the country the state of plastic pollution.

Read the article here.

The Werribee River Association and Junubi Wyndham joined forces to clean up Lollipop Creek in Wyndham Vale.

“Every piece of rubbish we take out improves their quality of life and ours. It doesn’t make us feel good to see an unloved environment.”

The clean up was Sunday, March 5, meeting at the rear of the Honour Avenue IGA in Wyndham Vale.

“Young people are going to inherit the environment – getting them involved is critical,” Junubi Wyndham program manager Poly Kiyaga.

Read the article here.

A number of community groups have bandedtogether to call for dredging to be paused after hundreds of kilos of rubbish washedup on the beach, which they say puts beach users and marine life at risk.

A dredging operation in Warrnambool is digging up a lot of litter and dumping it on to beaches. BeachPatrol 3280 leader Colleen Hughson says an alarming amount of rubbish has washed up on the beach as a result of the dredging. In three days, volunteers collected 80 kilograms of rubbish and more than 640 shredded cans.   

"The beach looked like a rubbish tip," Ms Hughson said.  "There's more washing in each day."   Some of the rubbish is dated back to the 1980s and includes bread bag tags, spoons, bottles, margarine containers and even coal.

Learn more here.

The BeachPatrol 3193 group of Ricketts Point featured in a full page story in this month's issue.   

Read the article here.

Dredging at Warrnambool's historic breakwater is depositing a "frightening" amount of "dangerous"litter onto the beach.  BeachPatrol 3280 leader Colleen Hughson said volunteers had collected 78 kilograms of rubbish deposited by the works in the past three days.  "A lot of people have been concerned about it," she said. "All this litter off the breakwater has sunk to the bottom of the ocean floor, it's been covered up with sand for many years and now it's all being dredged up.  "The dredging machine is actually ripping up the rubbish. We've collected over 600 shredded aluminium cans on the beach, it's quite a danger to beach walkers."

Read the article here.