Non-profit organisation Keep New Zealand Beautiful is hoping many will look beyond the backyard and tackle trash during Clean Up Week 2022.
The annual event returns from September 17 to 23, mobilising friends, family, schools, businesses and community groups to take part collecting litter in their area.
Keep New Zealand Beautiful chief executive Heather Saunderson said last year 30,000 volunteers took part collecting about 300 tonnes of litter.
"Clean Up Week provides a great opportunity for everyone to actively participate in looking after their local environment, creating a more sustainable, ecologically diverse and pollution-free future for all New Zealanders,” Ms Saunderson said.
Purakaunui School principal Nicky Bell said the school was planning to take part and was considering local places it could beautify during the week.
Two areas close to the school — Long Beach and Purakaunui estuary — were already benefitting from regular visits by the pupils, including planting pikao or pingao, also known as golden sand sedge, a native sand-binding sedge that played an important role in New Zealand’s dune ecosystems, she said.
Portobello School teacher Cheryl Neill said the school had been involved in Clean Up Week for several years.
"The children and whanau are divided into groups and are allocated to an area of Portobello.
"Armed with our rubbish bags and gloves we pick up all sorts of rubbish and meet up at the Latham Bay playground when completed."
All the rubbish was sorted into recyclable and non recyclable piles and the Dunedin City Council collected the rubbish later to take it to the waste station, she said.
