THE mindless impulse to throw trash can be reversed into a compulsion to pick it up.
Doctors Patricia Knox and her husband, pathologist Rory Mulligan, both 57, have become waste- picking strandlopers.
They walk on Nahoon beach or round the Reef at the Nahoon River mouth every day carrying recycled bags, working their way through litter lining the shore and trapped in the rocks at the point.
A leisurely family stroll on this beloved, but sewage-ravaged beach, is a mission for their four children.
It started after dog lovers, like the doctors who own chocolate Labradors, Morgan and Madison, were criticised for polluting the beach.
So the doctors did a comparison, dog poop versus trash.
There was so much trash they just kept on picking it up, 90 minutes a day, seven days a week, for five years.
“It’s like green gym!” said the quiet, wholesome but humble-looking pair.
Nahoon trash tells a story. “On Monday it’s lots of glass.”
After storms, its trash coming from the sewers and the Ihlanza pump station at the mouth of the Ihlanza “Turdy” river .
“You get lots of condoms, earbuds, and bottlecaps. They must come out of the filter. I suspect the sumps at the pump station are being emptied into the river.”
This week the Dispatch discovered an outlet pipe which showed signs of sewage waste at the river mouth leading from the pumphouse.
Last week the river was a septic, stinking brown. Scores of indigenous Mozambican tilapia littering the banks were being eaten by kelp gulls .
Faecal counts were at 11000 CFU – 9000 higher than the legally permissible limit of 2000.
Nahoon beach was closed.
But the docs kept on picking up, saying: “It’s like running; once you start doing it, you get to a point where you don’t even know you are doing it.”
Their curious actions soon led to other beach-users getting in on the act, and now there is a core group of about six suburban waste pickers working on the beach.
Mulligan said: “You write a letter to the municipality and nothing happens. Then you start doing something about it and you feel much better!” —
Just up the doctors’ alley
Doctors Patricia Knox and her husband, pathologist Rory Mulligan, both 57, have become waste- picking strandlopers.
They walk on Nahoon beach or round the Reef at the Nahoon River mouth every day carrying recycled bags, working their way through litter lining the shore and trapped in the rocks at the point.
A leisurely family stroll on this beloved, but sewage-ravaged beach, is a mission for their four children.
It started after dog lovers, like the doctors who own chocolate Labradors, Morgan and Madison, were criticised for polluting the beach.
So the doctors did a comparison, dog poop versus trash.
There was so much trash they just kept on picking it up, 90 minutes a day, seven days a week, for five years.
“It’s like green gym!” said the quiet, wholesome but humble-looking pair.
Nahoon trash tells a story. “On Monday it’s lots of glass.”
After storms, its trash coming from the sewers and the Ihlanza pump station at the mouth of the Ihlanza “Turdy” river .
“You get lots of condoms, earbuds, and bottlecaps. They must come out of the filter. I suspect the sumps at the pump station are being emptied into the river.”
This week the Dispatch discovered an outlet pipe which showed signs of sewage waste at the river mouth leading from the pumphouse.
Last week the river was a septic, stinking brown. Scores of indigenous Mozambican tilapia littering the banks were being eaten by kelp gulls .
Faecal counts were at 11000 CFU – 9000 higher than the legally permissible limit of 2000.
Nahoon beach was closed.
But the docs kept on picking up, saying: “It’s like running; once you start doing it, you get to a point where you don’t even know you are doing it.”
Their curious actions soon led to other beach-users getting in on the act, and now there is a core group of about six suburban waste pickers working on the beach.
Mulligan said: “You write a letter to the municipality and nothing happens. Then you start doing something about it and you feel much better!” —
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