Who invented clean up australia day

This simple idea ignited an enthusiasm and desire among the local community to get involved and make a difference. And surely if a capital city could be mobilised into action, then so could the whole nation! And so it was that Clean Up Australia Day was born in Learn more about the issues and the what you can do to reduce the amount of waste that ends up in landfill each year.

The appeal of Clean Up the World has demonstrated that this simple Australian idea has universal appeal and the health of the environment is of concern to people and communities worldwide. Under the banner of Clean Up the World people across the planet are willing to do something themselves to help protect and care for their environment.

Over the past three decades Clean Up Australia has evolved into an organisation that works with the community, government and business to provide practical solutions to help us all live more sustainably every day of the year.

Today the focus is as much on preventing rubbish entering our environment as it is removing what has already accumulated, with issues based campaigns making every day a Clean Up Day. But then something happened. On 26 March , months after it had gone online, Slat's TedX talk went viral. I received about 1, emails per day in my personal mailbox from people volunteering to help. Slat still doesn't know what made his idea take off like that, but he describes it as a great relief.

The amount of plastic being discarded into the marine environment is such that we could eventually see an ocean where the amount of plastics is roughly one third the total biomass of fish - 1lb of plastic for every 2lbs of fish, according to Nicholas Mallos from Ocean Conservancy , which organises coastal clean-ups. According to the UN Environment Programme there are on average 13, pieces of floating plastic per square kilometre of ocean - but that goes up to millions of pieces in the gyres.

Many of these particles end up being accidentally ingested by marine animals, which can die of starvation because of the plastic filling their stomachs. Albatrosses are particularly vulnerable because they feed on the eggs of flying fish, which are attached to floating objects - now most likely a piece of plastic.

Dr Jan Andries van Franeker from the Institute for Marine Resources and Ecosystem Studies IMARES in the Netherlands has some of these objects in a pot in his office: a toothbrush, cigarette lighters, floaters from fish nets, a golf ball, a tampon applicator - all found in albatross chick's carcasses. Turtles tend to be the victims of plastic bags, which when immersed in water look just like jellyfish. Evolutionary adaptations make it impossible for turtles to reject bags once they've started to eat.

The amount of industrial plastic pellets van Franeker finds in the birds has halved since the s - it seems the industry has at least partially cleaned up its act.

It doesn't cost us anything to throw it away. But the cost to us could be very high, in the long term. Plastics can act as a sponge and soak up chemicals in the water. Find out more. It is a grave situation - so when Slat came along with a seemingly simple solution, he began making headlines across the world.

Could a teenager save the world's oceans? His enthusiasm fired up millions of people, but along with the offers of help and donations, came criticism. It wouldn't work, some said. Others argued that it would be better to collect litter from beaches, where it gets deposited by waves. Having caught the world's attention, the first thing he did was to disappear from sight.

He needed scientific evidence to back up his theory and answer his critics. The Ocean Cleanup is a non-profit organization developing and scaling technologies to rid the oceans of plastic. This goal means we plan to put ourselves out of business — once we have completed this project, our work is done. The Ocean Cleanup is developing cleanup systems that can clean up the floating plastics caught swirling in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. System , our latest system iteration, reached proof of technology on October 20 th , , meaning we can now start the cleanup.

The Ocean Cleanup has developed the first scalable solution to efficiently intercept plastic in rivers before it reaches the oceans. As a non-profit, donations and in-kind support enable us to work towards our goal of ridding the world's oceans of plastic.