JULY VOLUNTEER OF THE MONTH

Below is a speech Oliver Taylor wrote and presented to his classroom in July 2016. KNZB were so impressed with Oliver’s effort to educate his class on the importance of not littering that he was awarded with the New Couriers Volunteer of the Month for July.

“Kia-ora. I am Roger the rubbish bag and I am here to talk about rubbish – yes rubbish! I am a 6th generation Custie and I want to preserve our beautiful wee township to keep it clean and tidy for generations to come. The future does begin today so “Come on kids, lets clean up Cust”!

My favourite road in Cust is Mill Rd. I hate travelling down it and seeing lots of rubbish. I have therefore devised a cunning plan, where us kids adopt a road, or piece of road, and clean it up. My family have already picked up over 1 council bag, like me, of rubbish off Mill Road. Some of this rubbish was cigarettes packets, cans, bottles, clothes, food wrappers and packaging, a Ray White sign plus many more things. A lot of this could have been recycled if the litterers weren’t so lazy! When I saw all that rubbish I felt disgusted, angry, sickened and disappointed. I hate people who litter because it’s a criminal offence, it ruins our environment and makes our beautiful NZ messy.

In 1967 the Anti Litter Council was formed. This is now known as Keep New Zealand Beautiful. They are dedicated to keeping our communities clean, safe and beautiful. Last Year Keep New Zealand Beautiful and their 86,000 volunteers collected 187,500 tonnes of rubbish and restored 64,102 metres of roads, highways and shorelines. This was an amazing achievement and has inspired me to start my “Come on kids lets clean up Cust” campaign. Lets make our ancestors proud of us and look after this lovely town, like they did. The future begins today folks, so please be rubbishwise.”