Shining light on local heroes

The Litterboom Project was born from a desire to ensure that we could enjoy clean oceans and therefore, a clean surf which resonated very closely with our whole team. At the time, I was a trail development consultant and had the privilege of working in green spaces around Durban and KZN. It became apparent to me that we needed to direct our efforts towards the river systems since this was where approximately 80% of ocean plastic pollution was coming from. We believe that by focusing upstream, not only in rivers but also in under-served communities, we can implement more integrated waste management systems that work to the benefit of people and the environment.

We have a remarkable team that includes Josh Redman, our big wave surfing, bird-watching, and baking guru, who runs our operations side, Musa Majola, who is also a practising Sangoma and father, who runs all of our logistics and community engagements in KZN. Our social media manager is Casey Pratt, who works for the locally-based Love Africa Marketing team. In Cape Town, and recently joined us to manage operations, is Peter Muller. Nompumelelo is our administrative support and ensures that we have clear communication with all of our teams around the country andis the friendly face of our beach clean-ups. We are a small but effective team and pride ourselves in our management model, which allows us to manage over 70 staff in over 12 communities around South Africa.

We are really proud of our sponsors and partners because we expect a high standard of commitment with the work we do at The Litterboom Project and all of our partners have been solid through COVID, an economic recession and floods and riots in Durban. These partners include Parley, ARB Electrical, Rare Plastics, Fedgroup, Astore Keymak, Vans, City of Cape Town and Hunt Properties.

People can support us by joining in a clean-up, donating to us or even encouraging their companies to support us, where we could issue them a Section 18a certificate for tax purposes. We also encourage people to be vocal towards producers and brands that need to do more to drastically reduce the amount of single-use plastic they are creating. Single-use plastic is a flawed design and in the world, we now live in, we have the minds to do better than this and should not allow the powers that be – petrochemical companies and big brands, to continue to sell us on continuing the status quo. Finally, reducing your consumption is an easy place to start, which could be by using a reusable coffee cup, avoiding plastic takeaway containers, avoiding using plastic packets and ceasing using bottled water.

Our focus for the past 18 months, has evolved from collections using the Litterbooms and coastal strike missions into preventative land-based programmes. We truly believe that if we are to find real, lasting solutions, we need to have a blended approach and as such have focused on the implementation of Reclaimer Support programmes, education and innovation. We have successfully onboarded several reclaimers around Durban, who have started to tackle plastic within their communities with our support and are offering ongoing support towards growing these small businesses for their benefit. We are also very pleased with our Pilot Wastepreneur programme, which we kicked off last year and have had some early success through the support of both The Mr Price Foundation and Barrows. Plans are afoot to expand this post-consumer and post-industrial waste beneficiation programme into 2023 – this is an exciting space for us and the trainees. We are also looking to expand our Litterboom teams into Johannesburg this year.