By Ludovic Grosjean, member of the Rotaract Club of Melbourne City, Australia    

Success starts at home. This is why every month we invite Rotary and Rotaract clubs in our district to join us for a walk along the river near Flinders station in Melbourne, Australia, to participate in cleaning trash and debris from the water. This is but a small step in the overall goal towards keeping plastic from our oceans, but it is an important one. Every piece of plastic that we keep out of the ocean is a success.

After each walk, we compile information (photos, pollution data) on what we have collected and we measure the impact of our clean-ups. We look for all types of pollution, not just single-use plastics. We have removed bikes, shopping trolleys, Australian rules footballs, syringes, plastics straws and lids, cigarette buds, polystyrene pieces, and more.

A few weeks after the…