For 42 days in 2014 Living Lamma and numerous volunteers spent a few hours each day picking up rubbish, trash, garbage and all kinds of waste from Yung Shue Wan harbourfront, to restore some of the beauty of this “bay of banyan trees”
21 September – 2 November 2014
North Lamma Community Effort
BEFORE: Every day residents and visitors to Yung Shue Wan enjoyed the views of the harbour, but the beach was covered in rubbish.
AFTER: For the first time in years, people started walking on the sand and enjoying the beach.
Corals
Crabs and other beach animals and seabirds ignore the fact this land is not an “official” beach.
Every day we cleaned the beach, people joined us
But when we moved rubbish to one place for collection before removing we were warned that we were littering the beach. “SCMP: Lamma Islanders warned over waste they cleared from beach”.
We were pleasantly surprised by how much we were able to improve the beach by simply picking up rubbish for an hour or two every day
We were also surprised by what we found on the beach. By documenting what we find on cleanups we learn what we need to stop throwing away.
We removed large pieces of dumped construction waste and litter as well as washed up marine trash
The polystyrene used for lunchboxes and to transport food breaks down to microplastic that our marine life (including fish and seafood) eats…
Kids played their part in cleaning the beach that was previously too dirty to play on.
After 42 days the sand below the harbourfront was a beach and not an eyesore.