The Blythedale community are calling on visitors to “do better” after weekend revelers left the beaches and verges covered in unsightly litter. Residents said young people from all along the North Coast converge on the beach at weekends and on public holidays for nights of partying and drinking.
“The sight on a Monday morning has residents retreating in disgust and in anger at the debris banked up all along the car park. It is absolute chaos, and there is no regard for the beach, the environment or the community,” said a resident who did not wish to be named.
By 7.30am on Monday teams of municipal clean-up crew arrived and began to make inroads into the mounds of food and packaging waste and broken bottles. This happens every weekend. He went on to tell the Courier that beachgoers left behind “almost every kind of trash you can think of,” including broken beer and whiskey bottles.
“Greater efforts needed to be made to create awareness through school and community education programmes, ” he said.
He said the issue of litter was a joint responsibility of the municipality and its citizens.
Recently the KwaDukuza municipality launched a clean-up campaign aimed to raise awareness of the responsibility the public has to throw their trash in bins and not illegally dump waste on the side of the road or in open spaces.
Acting mayor Dolly Govender urged everyone to take ownership of their environment and said that while the municipality’s solid waste management department worked hard to ensure high levels of cleanliness and clean streets it was in the community’s interest to look after the neighbourhoods they lived in and keep their environment clean.
