Volunteers at Wellington’s annual Clean Up Australia Day on Saturday, March 3 collected a truckload of rubbish lying around the town - both on land and in the water.

The Western Paddlers of NSW Kayak Club were wet and dirty removing rubbish from rivers in their kayaks. Most of these paddling participants travelled from Dubbo especially for the event.

Wellington Community Progress and Action Group (WCPAG) organised the town’s 2024 Clean Up Australia Day.

The Wellington-based body is a committed group of local volunteers working together to highlight and address the priorities and interests of local residents, businesses, voluntary and community groups.

It aims to make the Wellington community a better place to live in, work in or visit.

WCPAG hosted this national event in Wellington which had a theme of ‘Unite’.

People did come together and within two hours an entire truckload of rubbish was collected.

This was the local progress groups’ fifth annual Clean Up Australia Day event in Wellington.

With a truckload of rubbish gathered every time, it means that five truckloads of rubbish have been removed from the local reserves, parks, streets and rivers.

That is a satisfying result for WCPAG.

Clean Up Australia Day is this nations’ largest community-based environmental event.

More than 20 million Australians have participated in Clean Up Australia Day activities and events over the past 30 years.

This year there were more than 10,000 Clean Up sites registered and approximately 750,000 passionate volunteers across Australia.

“It is important people help as Australia creates 2.5 million tonnes of plastic waste each year,” WCPAG stated in a media release.

“Only 12 per cent of this is recycled with the rest ending up in our parks, roadsides, bush, waterways, oceans or in landfill as rubbish.

“Once again, some of the worst rubbish ‘hotspots’ in Wellington were within the Coles and Woolworths carparks and garden areas in the CBD.

“The good news was that the rivers were reasonably clean this year, however mattresses and shopping trolleys were still removed.”

The body noted that rivers provide 70 per cent of our drinking water so it is especially important to keep them clean and prevent litter and pollution from entering our waterways.

“There are increasing pressures on our biodiversity and an ever-growing volume of waste leaking into our natural and marine environments so ‘Clean Up Australia Day’ is an opportunity to step up for the environment, take collective action and make a difference to the environment in our local area and clean up our patch,” WCPAG stated.

“Thank you to the volunteers that participated and thank you to ‘Clean Up Australia Day’ for the support and to Dubbo Regional Council staff for collecting and removing the rubbish after the event.

“We hope this can continue to be an annual or a bi-annual event for Wellington.”