- From 1 June to 13 July, the Save a Fishie team, led by Zoë Prinsloo, will embark on a campaign to clean South African beaches, focusing on areas identified as needing extra attention.
- Prinsloo, who has cleaned over 270 beaches and collected more than 20 tons of litter, aims to raise awareness about plastic pollution through community involvement and educational partnerships.
- The campaign includes data collection on plastic waste and will be documented on social media and the Save a Fishie website.
From 1 June to 13 July, the Save a Fishie team will once again embark on an epic campaign to clean beaches along the South African coastline.
To date Zoë Prinsloo, who is spearheading the campaign, has cleaned more than 270 beaches and collected more than 20 tons of litter.
TygerBurger reported on the team’s venture during their previous coast-to-coast campaign, when they picked up an elephant’s weight in waste.
Save a Fishie does regular beach clean-ups across the City, doing their bit to rid the ocean of waste. On numerous occasions TygerBurger reported on their successful clean-ups and even joined in on one at Lagoon Beach last year.
This year’s Coast to Coast 24 campaign will take Prinsloo and her team up the West Coast from Cape Town to Port Nolloth, across the country via the Hennops and Jukskei Rivers, and down the East Coast from Richard’s Bay back to Cape Town. The campaign will focus on beaches identified during the Coast 2 Coast 2023 initiative as needing extra attention.
“Through working with community schools and organisations we aim to impart a shared ownership and awareness of the effects of plastic pollution on our ocean and personal health,” Prinsloo said, “supported by our various educational partners. In support of our environmental message we will also collect citizen science-based data on the quantity and variety of plastics we collect, which will be made available to the public on our website to download.”
Her accomplishments include setting a world record for the longest beach clean-up lasting 27 hours. Prinsloo’s work has earned her a place at the United Nations Youth Climate Summit in New York in 2019, recognition as one of the Top 100 African Youth Conservation Leaders in 2022, and the Mayor’s Medal Civic Award for Conservation from the Mayor of Cape Town in December 2023. Recently, she represented South Africa at the Helen Storrow Seminar in Switzerland.
Route
The team kicked off their first clean-up at Eden on the Bay Beach, where volunteers also jumped in to help.
“As it turned out, the beach was very clean,” said Prinsloo, “mostly just small items and the odd item. We found quite a few nurdles, which mom loves to look for. We were also joined by the City’s litter mascot, Bingo.”
Last year the team focused on cleaning as many beaches as possible: 111 in 71 days!
READ: Bothasig resident Zoë Prinsloo honoured by the City
Said Prinsloo: “In so doing we were also able to see where help is needed, which beaches were hardest hit by washouts by irresponsible beachgoers, by illegal public drinking or simply by neglect. This year, using the insight we gained in 2023, we will focus on those areas we now know need our help and need a good clean! We will do longer and more focused clean-ups working more with local groups and local schools. We intend raising more awareness and doing more education.
“We will again document our journey across our socials, ‘Environment. Education. Entertainment.’, for our 13 000+ followers, and on our website, https://saveafishie.co.za/blog/. We will also have a live tracking meter showing the public our kilometres travelled, kilograms of litter collected, the number of nurdles picked up and more.”
