South West tour group inviting the community to hit the sand and help with keeping pristine beach clean

A South West tour group is inviting the community to hit the sand to help keep a pristine bit of beach clean. WA Tourism Awards finalists Pemberton Discovery Tours is hitting the beaches on Saturday for its 12th annual beach clean-up, this year joining forces with the Pemberton Youth Emergency Service Cadets. Each year the tour group visits remote beaches in the region, taking an average 1000kg of waste off the shorelines. Partnering with Keep Australia Beautiful and the Tangaroa Blue Foundation, the rubbish collected will be collated and counted to best understand where the waste is coming from. Pemberton Discovery Tours owner Toni Dearle said the annual event was a highlight with people from Perth and beyond taking the time to travel and help with the clean-up. “We’ve noticed, certainly over the years, there’s a cyclic amount of rubbish that comes either from land-based rubbish, like from camping and so forth, and the marine base, which is from boats,” she said. “This year we’ve had a lot of rain come through, so the river mouth was cut open and the beach was exposed, which means there’s a lot of historical rubbish out there — back in the day when people thought it was OK to bury their rubbish in the sand. “It can be quite interesting to see what’s left up on the beach.” Mrs Dearle said the clean-up travels to the beaches used for their tours, and attendees can join one of the many fleet vehicles for free or drive themselves to the beach. The crew head off at 9am Saturday from Pemberton with the clean-up planned to take about five hours. “Everyone has to just come with a smile and a willingness to get out and pick-up rubbish,” Mrs Dearle said.