This Mandela Day saw the 3rd consecutive year that the team from Bidvest Insurance have joined forces with the Umhlanga Urban Improvement Precinct (UIP) in a beach clean-up effort, however, this year was a little different. After speaking with Cara Riley, Communication and place-making consultant to Urban MGT we realised that the current biggest threat to Marine Life continues to be nurdles – nurdles are small plastic pellets about the size of a lentil, they are used to make many common plastic objects in daily use. During the hectic KZN storms in 2017 a shipping container lost billions of these nurdles into the Durban port which have now affected over 2,000kms of coastlines, since then only about 20% have been recovered. The small size of the plastic balls and the sheer number of nurdles means that it is a massive job that requires an ongoing clean-up effort. Realizing the task at hand, Bidvest Insurance put out a challenge to local Bidvest companies to join in the effort and were delighted to have teams from Bidvest Car Rental and FMI rise to the challenge.
It was a beautiful day and there was a great buzz among the teams as they descended on the Umhlanga Promenade, where Lucy Cooke (Bidvest Insurance Marketing Manager) welcomed everyone and Dewet Geldenhuys of UIP briefed the teams on what was to be their mission for the day. The group of volunteers (who were also joined by some local residents and tourists) were split into two teams. Team 1 was tasked with ridding the beach of as many nurdles as possible while team 2 took part in sand dune rehabilitation along with the UIP team.
It was great to see different Bidvest companies joining together to make a positive impact on our environment and it was quite apt that the effort as a whole demonstrated the power of unity. Hopefully this is a ‘Proudly Bidvest’ initiative that we will see grow year on year.
