DB Green

During our last beach cleanup in September, a few concerned DB residents reported the sad state of Cheung Sha Lan beach to us, suggesting DB Green organize a cleanup of the beach. Having surveyed the beach and witnessed the terrible state it was in ourselves, it was decided that Cheung Sha Lan beach, the beach referred to as the “really beautiful little beach, were it not for all the rubbish”, would be included in our efforts at the November 18 beach cleanup.

As predicted, Cheung Sha Lan beach was in an awful state when we arrived just after 1:00pm on Sunday. I am sure many who arrived at the beginning felt a little overwhelmed and a bit hopeless picking up what seemed to be an endless amount of small pieces of rubbish. But as the day progressed and more hands came to help, it really was amazing to see the beach literally transform from a rubbish dump into the “really beautiful little beach” that everyone had envisioned. (Please see the before and after images below).

BEFORE THE CLEANUP…

AND… AFTER THE CLEANUP

Most of the rubbish was found towards the top of the beach. Most of it was plastic. We collected 7 full bags of just plastic items alone, and 4 bags full of polystyrene. There were many more bags filled with various other items of litter – some smelling so bad, we really didn’t want to know what the smell was! Lots of glass bottles, lots of aerosol spray cans, 5 syringes, so many lighters, so many toothbrushes(!), and plenty of light bulbs were also collected. There were a total of 5 tires of various sizes that were dug out of the sand thanks to a couple of strong, persistent men and some kids who were ever so eager to dig! When one clever little boy found a bamboo basket, his “Mu (mandarin for wood) Basket” began, and he, together with countless others collected so much wood, some even suggested we set fire to it – start a camp fire, have a barbecue, or offer it to the villagers for their fires. We were all too tired to start a fire (and have to deal with the consequences…) and the villagers turned down our kind offer saying they had enough of their own, and so the wood was handed over to the Marine Department for disposal along with all the other rubbish. Old furniture – a crib, a sofa bed, a table top were also found and dragged out of the bushes entirely by a group of kids.

How helpful the children were on the day! And how blissful they all looked playing on the clean beach towards the end. I can only imagine how proud all the parents must be for having such great kids who are so helpful and who seem to really care about the environment! Great parents for raising such great kids – I believe children are a reflection of their parents. Seeing the children do their part gave me an overwhelming sense of hope for the future of our earth.

A great big thank you to every single one of you who came to Cheung Sha Lan beach and helped to bag all the rubbish, and to those strong men and women who stayed behind to drag the bags down and onto the Marine Department boats at the very end. A special thank you to Tracey for all her amazing planning, coordination, and organization of the day, and to Kate, Zara, and Denise for all their tireless input and support. Thanks to all of you, it truly was a successful beach cleanup!

I hope more and more people will take the beautiful stroll from Discovery Bay to visit Cheung Sha Lan beach and enjoy its beauty and nature. It is my hope to organize a once a month low-key mini beach cleanup at Cheung Sha Lan beach to maintain the result of our efforts last Sunday, and to continue our attempts at picking out the rubbish that was so hard to get out of the bushes. I believe even one hour, once a month can make a world of difference. I hope you can join us again!

Thank you very much!

PS. All the photos taken on the day (at both Nim Shue Wan and Cheung Sha Lan beaches) can be viewed at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/21021387@N04/sets/

• Leave a comment... (0)

DB Green wants to say a huge thank you to all the fab people who turned out to clean the beaches of Nim Shue Wan and Cheung Sha Lan on Sunday the 18th of November.

All up there was about 120 people who helped make a HUGE difference to the beaches. It was a lot of hard work – especially on Cheung Sha Lan beach which had piles of rubbish including furniture, wood, plastic containers, polystyrene, rope, lots of toothbrushes, old shoes … you name it, it was probably removed from the beach! The Marine Dept and their boats once again enabled us to remove this massive amount of rubbish (estimated to be well over a ton), which made our job a lot easier.

DB Green wants to thank all of our supporters and sponsors for their contributions on the day.

Hemingways for a $500 voucher
Down South Wines for 4 bottles of wine
Sopranos for a $200 voucher
Dymocks Cafe donated discount vouchers

The Marina Club was a great help on the day providing a variety of drinks, cups, ice and helped us cook the sausages for the after party BBQ

Hoi Yu provided us with water and Park N Shop donated the BBQ condiments and napkins

This was the third beach clean up that DB Green has organised and the first time that Cheung Sha Lan was included. Despite the impressive amount of rubbish that was removed, there is still a long way to go before this beach is thoroughly clean. There is a lot of tidal rubbish caught in the bushes which is very time consuming to remove. We hope to have another beach clean up in the near future and will concentrate on this really lovely beach.

So a HUGE thank you once again to all the volunteers who took the time to make a difference to our local natural environment. Your hard work is appreciated! We hope you enjoyed the BBQ that was provided by DB Green from our fundraising.

Just a quick point to bear in mind, one of the main items of rubbish that was consistently found on the beaches was drinking straws. Next time you are offered a straw please think about if you really need to use one, it may seem like an insignificant thing to do but when you see the hundreds that get washed up on beaches it suddenly seems like a bigger problem.

PS This posting will be updated over the next couple of days to include many more photos of all the action. Please come and look again very soon.

• Leave a comment... (0)

At Nim Shue Wan today we will have our 3rd beach cleanup and we are also holding a sausage sizzle afterwards. This is a great opportunity to meet some like minded people and to be able to enjoy the beautiful natural beaches of Discovery Bay we sometimes forget about. We would love to see you all there and don’t forget to bring along friends and family 1-4pm!

Unfortunately the beautiful organic cotton tote bags that we were going to be giving to each person have had a major hiccup and even though we allowed buffer time to ensure they were ready for this event the supplier lost confidence that the manufacturer was in fact using organic cotton for their products and cancelled all their orders- which included our bags. We came up with an alternate idea but HSBC was no longer interested and have pulled out of sponsorship. At this stage we are not 100% sure that we will be able to go ahead with reordering them which is disappointing but we know that no-one joining in the beach cleanup is doing so for the bag (even those who pre-registered) and hope you don’t mind that we can’t supply them as promised. We are a non profit voluntary organisation and not a business as I’m sure you understand. And of course we still have great sponsorship and some great lucky draw prizes such as bottles of wine from Down South Wines and some copies of the book “Going Green in Hong Kong” (which has been receiving a lot of press lately!!- well done Catherine- it’s a hit!!), plus a $200 voucher at Sopranos and the grand prize from the ever generous people at Hemingway’s – a $500 dinner voucher.

It should be a great day. DON’T FORGET to bring your own water bottle- we will have water to refill your own bottles but are trying to avoid being a cause of pollution ourselves by supplying anything disposable. Also bring sunscreen plus insect repellent- I saw large mosquitoes at that other beach later in the afternoon. The forecast is for 20° -24° with sunny periods- no rain – a bit of cloud.

SHOULD BE A GREAT DAY AND WE THINK MAYBE OUR BIGGEST TURN OUT YET!!

Previous post:

Thank-you to those people letting me know about the clash with the DBIS school fair. Due to that we have decided to change the Beach Cleanup to the next day- Sunday the 18th of November 1-4pm – so mark that date in your diary. Tracey is again the team leader for this along with Salina , Denise and myself. You can contact Tracey on tlread@gmail.com

We are again taking registration for this on beachcleanup.DB@gmail.com

HSBC are sponsoring some of the event and we have asked them to pay for the cost of some organic cotton bags with our name on it. Salina has designed the bag and we have made sure the bag is made in an environmentally friendly manner. HSBC is paying for enough for each person at the beach cleanup- (we may have to limit to adults or 2 per family) – but we hope you will use them for your grocery shopping and therefore be advertising our group and increasing our membership- not to mention reducing the use of plastic bags when you go shopping. In return for their sponsorship HSBC will take a moment to speak at the after event about the benefits of offshore investing. To ensure you receive one of these fabulous bags take a moment to register at beachcleanup.DB@gmail.com and that will ensure you definitely get a bag.

We also have some prizes from various restaurants which we will draw and ONLY if you’re actually present at the prize giving which we’ll make at 4:15pm. We’ll also have a sausage sizzle after the event.

• Leave a comment... (4)