4 minute read
CLEANUP ARABIA 2023
Feature And Photography Ally Landes
What an incredible Cleanup Arabia event we had on the 11th of November 2023, in Dibba Fujairah! We couldn’t be prouder of our ocean loving community of partners and members. We had a total of 171 participants turn up out of the registered 214, and we collected a total of 1,359.64kg in this year’s campaign!
Well done to our 80 (61 adults, 19 kids) beach participants for holding out as long as you did. It was so hot this year that we had to wrap up an hour earlier than planned, but as a group we still pulled a tremendous effort at the beach and collected 134.24kg of rubbish. It was shocking to everyone to see just how much rubbish there was on a beach full of campers. The biggest question asked, was: why would anyone want to camp around so much rubbish?
We always ask everyone to wear closed shoes when we do clean-ups for good reason. The most hazardous items on the beach collected were the masses of shards of broken glass, 3 syringes (with needles exposed), a blade, and all the sharp wooden BBQ skewers lying in the sand. Despite an empty skip at the location, campers left rubbish bags (when they were used) by the car lane for someone else to dispose of them.
We separately collected a total of 21,150 cigarette butts (which are 95% plastic & toxic to the environment) for Goumbook’s Waste to Value campaign where they are recycled into a new circular material. Cigarette butts still today make up 30%-40% of the items picked up in annual coastal and urban clean-ups. We have sadly been adding disposable E-cigarettes to that criteria since their existence.
A big shout out to the East Coast dive centres for organising the dives:
1. Goblin Diving Center collected 252kg from Al Bidya Port.
2. Sandy Beach Diving Academy collected 49.4kg from Al Bidya Port.
3. Divers Down collected 234kg from Dadhna Harbour.
4. Al Boom Diving collected 30kg from Dadhna Harbour.
5. Nemo Diving Center collected 60kg from Dibba Port.
6. Freestyle Divers collected 100kg from Dibba Port.
And last, but not least:
7. The Deep Dive Dubai team did their CUA dive, with Al Jazeera Diving & Swimming Center in Ras Al Khaimah and collected 500kg of ghost nets from the Ajman Glory wreck on the 13th of November.
We want to give an even bigger shout out to EDA’s Strategic Partner, DP World and their team who took part in both the beach and dive clean-ups, and to our CUA 2023 Gold Partner, Ahmed Seddiqi & Sons/DOXA 1889 and their team who also took part in both the beach and dive clean-ups, but most of all, for supporting us all to make this year’s event such a success!
Well done to everyone who took part in removing as much rubbish as was possible from the beach and underwater; to everyone who counted and weighed all the items, and an especially big round of applause to the kids!
Hard work pays off, but you all made it so much fun and so rewarding.
Thank you to the Radisson Blu Resort Fujairah for hosting a lovely venue and lunch for all of us to get together at the end of all our clean-ups.
All the event photos can be viewed on the EDA website: www.emiratesdiving.com/events/cleanup-arabia
Or on our Facebook page: https://bit.ly/3QQnGGv
