Clean Up Australia Day, 4 March 2012

[Australia Wide Today,  4 Mar] In 1989 an ‘average Australian bloke’ had a simple idea to make a difference in his own backyard – Clean Up Sydney Harbour. The event received an enormous public response with more than 40,000 Sydneysiders donating their time and energy to clean up the harbour.

The next year Clean Up Australia Day was born. Ian and his committee believed that if a capital city could be mobilised into action, then so could the whole nation. Almost 300,000 volunteers turned out on the first Clean Up Australia Day in 1990 and that involvement has steadily increased ever since.

This simple idea has now become the nation’s largest community-based environmental event. Now in its 21st year, the event attracts hundreds of thousands of volunteers from the community, schools and businesses to help clean up, fix up and conserve their environment.

In 2011 more than 565,631 volunteers across Australia helped to celebrate 21 years of Clean Up Australia by donning gloves and filling up Clean Up Australia Day rubbish bags with an estimated 16,449 tonnes of rubbish at 7,477 registered Sites across Australia. A big well done to everyone involved!

“Simple, easy actions can protect the health of our water resources and help save drinking water supplies. There is not one individual who cannot help to make a difference to the health of the environment” – Ian Kiernan AO. http://www.cleanup.org.au/au/CleanUpEvents/clean-up-australia-day-2012.html