http://www.michaelbgreen.com.au/left-pick-up-pieces

Left to pick up the pieces
in Environment, The Age on 8 October 2014

Plastic pollution in our waterways is getting worse fast. More and more
citizens are cleaning beaches, but can we stop litter at the source?

NICKO Lunardi, from Newport, is wearing a black t-shirt with two skulls
on it. He is 27 years old, an electrician, and a drummer in two punk
bands. He?s also the leader of a small group of volunteer beach cleaners
in Melbourne?s west.

It?s Sunday morning and a dozen people have slipped through a gap in the
fence to the Jawbone Reserve in Williamstown, the closest marine
sanctuary to the CBD. Parks Victoria?s website describes it as an
?unspoilt place? and a ?haven for coastal and marine life?.

It is full of trash. Lunardi picks up a fistful of sandy debris, shot
through with countless plastic chunks, lumps and specks. ?What can we do
with that?? he asks.

In the next hour, the group fills 16 large bags with plastic waste:
wrappers, bottles, straws, lighters, labels, lollipop sticks, thongs.
Plus rope, parking meter tickets, innumerable unknowable broken bits,
half a dozen syringes and a tyre.

Lunardi had been in the habit of cleaning up litter by himself. ?I felt
weird telling people I picked up rubbish,? he says. ?But then I
realised: ?No, I think they?re weird not picking up rubbish?.?