Mayco member for urban waste management, Grant Twigg joined a group of children from Strandfontein Early Childhood Development Centre on Thursday 12 October for a litter pick-up initiative around their school.
The City of Cape Town’s #SpringCleanCT campaign is an effort to galvanise Cape Town residents against the problems of littering and dumping. The initiative achieves this by offering rewards for tip-offs that lead to convictions for illegal dumping but also by motivating communities to get involved in cleaning their area. Getting communities involved helps to foster a sense of pride and ownership in the area and the offer of rewards will hopefully help bring a lot of illegal dumping to light that otherwise would go unreported. The City can then issue fines to discourage those responsible.
Twigg says: “Reaching the youth with our positive message, before they can be led astray, will help us win the war on waste in the long term. Many of us learned not to litter at school, and we still hold true to these values today. We have a series of similar events planned at ECDs throughout the City and we hope that more are inspired to participate in our campaign as a result of this spotlight. Let’s give our kids a cleaner future.”
Residents are encouraged to use the 24-hour toll-free number (0800 110077) for illegal dumping tip-offs. If a resident’s tip-off leads to a conviction they will be eligible for a reward. “If you would like to follow the children’s example by organising a clean-up, please take some photos and upload them to social media to inspire others. Tag your clean-up with #SpringCleanCT to show your pride in our beautiful Mother City,” says Twigg.
