The homeless joined in during a clean-up operation of Muizenberg Park and surrounding foot trails on Friday.
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Not-for-profit organisation Take Back Our Mountains (TBOM), Blue Ribbon, Pick n Pay and VW Table View teamed up to teach homeless people living in the area about the environment and how to keep it clean, as reported by News24.
‘This area has been on our agenda for quite some time because most hikers or locals, who live in the area, use the trail that takes you up to Boyes Drive to access trails on the mountain,’ says Taahir Osman, founder of TBOM.
‘There are a lot of (homeless) living here and of course, there is a lot of rubbish, so we put a team together and decided to come here with the support of Blue Ribbon, Pick n Pay and VW Table View who put together some nice hampers.’
‘We are involving the homeless to join us on the clean-up and to obviously teach them about the environment and how to keep the area clean. We also brought vouchers for them to get meals.’
Blue Ribbon sales manager Kashief Hendricks says the company assists in cleaning operations whenever possible. ‘Every month we try to assist in the community, whether it is helping the community with sandwiches or uplifting them and because we know our plastics have an effect on the environment we initiated this and we collaborate with TBOM and South African National Parks (SANParks) as well.’
He says most of the rubbish found during the clean-up operation consisted of plastic. ‘There are more of these incentives we need because, at the end of the day, it does affect our environment. We need to make sure that these plastic bags we use do not end up in our environment.’
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Picture: Friends of Muizenberg Park