KAB shines a spotlight on volunteers and partners during KAB Week

For over ten years in this voluntary role, Bruce organised over a hundred Busy Bees which included road and bushland clean-ups, tree planting and walk trail maintenance.

He also helped turn the sports ground entrance (which was bare gravel in 2014) into an attractive area with plants, Silver Princess trees and a rock feature.

In 2015, Bruce approached the Shire to turn an overgrown forestry area into an Arboretum. With Bruce leading the way, volunteers cleared areas ready for planting and created a car park. A few of the original 1963 trees survive and over 45 different tree species have been planted. In addition to the trees, signs have been erected, picnic tables added and a short walk trail established. The Wongan Hills Arboretum is a testament to Bruce and the Tidy Towns group will continue to develop this project.

Under Bruce’s presidency, Wongan Hills has won several awards at the Tidy Towns Sustainable Communities  Awards. In 2015 and 2016 Wongan Hills came first in Community Action and Well-being and in 2020 Wongan Hills was awarded the winner of the Environmental Sustainability category.

KAB thanks Wongan Tidy Towns for sharing your story about Bruce. We wish Bruce well in his next venture. You can read more about the amazing work Bruce has done for his community here.

The group have been active for over five years and have grown to bring like minded community volunteers together to educate, influence and care for our oceans, waterways and marine life.

Coastal Waste Warrior volunteers have removed over 5,000kgs (140,000 pieces!) of litter that would otherwise cause harm to the marine environment. All data collected has been input into Tangaroa Blue’s Australian Marine Debris Initiative (AMDI) database. Without the data collection they would not be able to measure this positive impact PLUS the data collected is being used to support litter reduction initiatives locally and around Australia!

KABWA invited founder Kirsten Field to the annual Tidy Towns Sustainable Communities State Awards event, to showcase the amazing work they are doing.

The next clean-up activity is at the Port Bouvard Marina in Wannanup cleaning along the NE point of the Dawesville Cut, find out how you can get involved here.
 

The teachers who run the program are passionate about the students taking care of the ocean environment, a place they all love to be.

These citizens scientists have removed hundreds of items from the coastline, keeping our oceans that bit cleaner.

Data from these audits is entered into the Australian Marine Debris initiative database.

Find out how you, or your school can get involved in the Adopt-a-Spot program here.

Tangaroa Blue Foundation coordinates the Australian Marine Debris Initiative (AMDI), an on-ground network of volunteers, communities, organisations and agencies around the country monitoring the impacts of marine debris along their stretch of coastline.

Now in its 20^th year, Tangaroa Blue Foundation has coordinated the removal of close to 27 million items from the Australian coastline and added this data into AMDI. The aim of TBF is to not only remove the debris, record the amounts and types of debris at different locations, but ultimately identify the source and stop it from entering the environment. In the words of TBF founder, Heidi Tait, “If all we do it clean up, that’s all we’ll ever do.”

The annual WA Beach Clean Up is an exciting, statewide citizen science program that provides a snapshot of debris around the state. KAB WA is a major sponsor of this event, and we encourage you to be a part of this too.

Join one of the many clean-ups around WA or register one of your own at Tangaroa Blue Foundation’s event website.

Seeing the toll that residential and commercial development was having on the Peel Inlet channel, the grant was used to provide additional compressed air for volunteer divers to clean-up the marina waterways.

KABWA attended the Club’s Clean Up Australia Day event which was a great success with volunteers removing nearly 40kgs of litter.

If you have a great litter action idea that needs some funding to make it a reality, apply for next year’s Community Litter Grants round. Read more from previous year’s recipients here

Information gathered from an audit is a valuable tool in developing a Clean Schools litter-prevention program.

To learn more and register for the Clean Schools program, visit our website.

https://www.wa.gov.au/organisation/keep-australia-beautiful-wa/clean-schools-program

On average, David spends 3 to four hours on this stretch of road each week, collecting at least one bag of rubbish. From the data that David sends to us, we estimate that David has contributed more than 38,000 volunteer hours.

Hear what David has to say about why he joined KAB WA’s Adopt-a-Spot program.
“I joined the Adopt-a-Spot program because it's a wonderful way of contributing to our beautiful environment that we live in and it's a very small contribution that I love doing. Since I starting doing this, I have noticed less rubbish around. I believe this is because people see me and it triggers their attitude.”

Thank you, David, for your ongoing efforts.