DB Green

Every year, after a wonderful night of fun and celebration, beaches in Hong Kong are covered with litter after the Mid- Autumn Festival celebrations. Large numbers of lanterns, candles and wax globs, glow-sticks, lighters, beverage bottles and food wrappers are left half buried in the sand. Not only is this rubbish ugly, but as the tide rises, a lot of it ends up in the ocean.

DB’s very own Tai Pak Beach is one of those covered with litter after the festival. At last year’s clean-up, thousands of discarded glow- sticks, bottles and numerous other items were left on the beach.

This year, come and see for yourself and do your part to help keep our beach clean, prevent marine pollution and protect the ocean. Join TheWayToGo and DB Green for this year’s annual ‘Post-Lantern Festival’ beach cleanup!

Date:  Sunday, October 4, 2009
Time: 09:00 – 13:00
Meeting place: Tai Pak Beach (under the trees, on the Water Margin side)
What to bring*: sunblock, a hat, a water bottle, lots of energy and enthusiasm!

All kids will receive a free beach cleanup crew T-shirt for helping out, and everyone is welcome to enjoy a celebratory post-clean-up barbeque at Hemingways!

See you there!

*Gloves and rubbish bags will be provided. Drinking water will be provided for free refills.

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As you know, a full recycling program is carried out in every village throughout DB.  What you may not know is that all of the materials collected are weighed and recorded, providing a view of the recycling trends in the community for the first eight months of 2009.  From January through August, a total of 88,667 Kg of paper, 7,348 Kg of plastic, and 4,211 Kg of aluminium, have been collected for recycling.

At a village level: La Serene is in the lead with the highest recycling rate for paper (59 kg per unit); Peninsula Village (Jovial, Haven, Verdant, Cherish, Blossom, Twilight, Crestmont, Caperidge, Coastline) is in the lead for plastic (2 kg per unit); and Seabee Lane is leading for aluminium (1.22 kg per unit).  These rates are for the total material collected for the year, not on a monthly basis.

While the overall trend for paper recycling has been increasing modestly across the 8 months of this year, the plastic and aluminium recycling rates are fairly flat and not particularly high on a per unit basis.  Encourage your family and neighbours to recycle – let’s get those quantities up –2kg of plastic per month per family should be very easy to achieve!

For more details, check out the summary report and information on which villages are included is here DB recycling stats 2009

You can also download the original reports from the Dbay web site here then click on ‘search’ and type ‘Recycle Record’. 

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A big thank you to all the volunteers who came to Nim Shue Wan beach and helped out at Sunday’s ‘International Coastal Cleanup’ beach cleanup.

The shocking aftermath of Typhoon Koppu at Nim Shue Wan was shin-deep polystyrene fragments that were so small, it looked as if it had snowed on the beach! That, combined with lots of rope, fishing nets, plastic bottles, bags and wrapping, and surprising numbers of toothbrushes, lighters and sandals made for a tough morning of raking, scooping and bagging.

What seemed like a daunting task was made possible by the help of many hands. What was accomplished was fantastic to say the very least. A total of 151 rubbish bags were filled with rubbish, removed from the beach and taken to landfill by the Marine Department. That’s about 760kgs of rubbish we helped to remove from the ocean!

Check out the before-after shots for proof of the difference that was made…

We wish to extend a big thank you to Gary and Hemingways for their wonderful hotdogs, Hoi Yu for water refills, and the Marina Club for all the ice and cold drinks.

We’d also like to send out a special pat on the back to all the little ones who worked (and played) so hard on the beach as part of the ‘Eco- kids Beach Clean Up Crew’.

We hope you all had a good time!

Rubbish in the ocean is one of the most widespread pollution problems we face, affecting all living creatures. Countless birds, dolphins, seals, and fish eat things they shouldn’t and many of them die. It can make the ocean more vulnerable to impacts from climate change, coastal development, and overfishing. It impacts local economies, seafood industries, and recreation, and reduces our access to beaches.

We appreciate everyone’s hard work and dedication to keep rubbish off the beach and out of the ocean.

We look forward to seeing you all again on Sunday, October 4 at DB’s
Tai Pak beach for our annual post-lantern festival beach cleanup.
There will be a prize-giving ceremony as we draw the Eco-kids Beach Clean Up Crew raffle. Hope to see you there!

All the best!
Salina & Tracey

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It is that time of year again when we get to make an even bigger impact with our local beach cleanup. By joining in and documenting all the rubbish that we collect from the beaches we can combine our data with 100,000s of other people all around the world to capture a snapshot of the health of our oceans and beaches.

The International Coastal Cleanup is organised by the Ocean Conservancy (www.oceanconservancy.org) and each year they produce a booklet with the global report from all the data they receive (to read more about this please follow this link http://www.oceanconservancy.org/site/PageServer?pagename=icc_report).

Please come and participate in this fun and worthwhile day. DB Green is organising the cleanup of two of our neighbouring beaches that are in need of some TLC.

Meeting Point - Nim Shue Wan beach (on the road to the Marina Club – look out for the DB Green sign on the fence) on SUNDAY 20th SEPTEMBER from 9-1pm.

What to bring – lots of family and friends! A refillable waterbottle (we have loads of water kindly donated by Hoi Yu), lots of sunscreen and sun protection and sturdy shoes that may get wet.

What we will give you – gloves, bags for collecting rubbish and importantly a data collection record sheet to note down ALL the rubbish you collect. We also have some rakes and tongs to use and on hand we have first aid facilities, a basic toilet and handwashing.

To celebrate afterwards, the wonderful team at Hemingway’s will be feeding us with a great BBQ on the beach.

We are looking forward to having as many people join us to make this another fantastic community day!

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