Litter Picking Day in Duipiple

Our very first CAD (Community Action Day) and... it was mostly a success.

Our event was supposed to start at 8am, but people were already clearing way before this. Maybe in a bid for their part of the village to look clean? Who knows... but it kind of defeated the idea of separating all the rubbish and recycling what we could. They just ended up burning their piles of rubbish.

When we headed out, we had 60 gloves (kindly donated by the Health Post) and all 60 of those gloves disappeared. We even had the children getting involved, who then demolished the tea and biscuits provided afterwards. The police, shopowners, women's group members, health workers... they all came out to get involved!

The plan was to separate the cardboard/paper and plastic into the rice bags to dispose of them properly. That didn't really go to plan...

We encouraged people to get on board to clear the rubbish, but the disposing of it was the main issue. Like the rest of the community had done previously, it ended with burning all the rubbish, both plastic and paper, in a pile at the end of the village. That's not what we wanted at all, but this is the norm across the region.

We've decided that this should be our next step with combating the waste management problem in this area. We are going to come up with a strategic plan to ensure that the waste is disposed of correctly within the community, products are reused wherever possible, and that there's no unnecessary burning of plastic to ensure no further damage to the climate.

All in all though, our first CAD showed us how onboard the community gets with programmes and how keen they are to implement change. It's just going to be our job now to educate the community on how to make those changes and sustain them.

I'm pleased with today as it's given us something to learn from, and hopefully our workshop on Tuesday will inform people a lot more on a good environment for the community.

Alice x

The lady in red is the leader of the Women's group.