Chad O’Sullivan (left), Khan Thorpe, Patrick Martin, Hayden Gordon and Ryan Heintze are hoping to further clean up Gawler’s environment with their new entity BluePlanet Co. PHOTO: Supplied
A TEAM of local young people have banded together to clean up Gawler’s environment, hoping it will help encourage residents to focus on recycling.
Khan Thorpe and Hayden Gordon both share a passion for the environment and for keeping their home town clean.
They started the Blue Planet Co. only a matter of weeks ago, spending their weekends picking up dumped rubbish from roadsides and waterways, before taking it home, sorting it into groups, and taking the different types of rubbish to their appropriate disposal points.
Mr Thorpe, 20, said the group aimed to unite people wanting to clean up the area to ensure they could all work together towards a common goal.
“Recycling is a big part of 2019, so I thought ‘why doesn’t the community get together every Sunday to clean together?’” he said.
The seeds of what would become the Blue Planet Co. were planted in Mr Thorpe’s head last year, when he saw other locals cleaning up public spaces.
Over the weekend, the boys recovered five large garbage bags of rubbish from the lake at Osborne Street, Evanston Gardens, using just their hands.
Mr Thorpe said they could’ve removed more rubbish if they had specialised equipment, something the group plans to purchase in the future.
“There’s a lot of pipes and concrete materials, bottles and cans, lots of bags and other random things people chuck in there over time,” he said.
“I cleaned up the same lake last year and got six bags worth of rubbish and we got five all up this weekend.
“It is very disappointing to see how much people have thrown into the water.
“I live around the area, so I’ve seen people chuck stuff in the lake before and it is really sad to see.
“Eventually, it all gets into the Gawler River.”
The group also identified Medlow and Bentley roads at Munno Para as a major hard rubbish dumping point.
Mr Thorpe said dumps and hard rubbish schemes, such as the new Gawler Council hard waste program, needed to become cheaper and more accessible to discourage dumpers.
“It’s their (illegal dumpers) fault they’re dumping it (hard rubbish), but at the same time, dumps are expensive to go to,” he said.
“The amounts we’ve been cleaning up have been two to three large trailer loads, which is hard to deal with when we’re so small.”
