The Spring Clean Is On Again

The Spring Clean Is On Again

More than a million participants are expected to roll their sleeves up and spring clean their country when Keep New Zealand Beautiful’s Clean Up New Zealand Week happens in September. At the same time, Graffiti Free Week launches to tackle tagging.

Both events aim to remove the urban and rural blights of graffiti and litter.
More than 1.3 million Kiwis participated in last year’s Clean Up New Zealand Week, Keep New Zealand Beautiful organises the clean up, providing bags, gloves and general health and safety advice. The bags and gloves are provided free to community organisation, services clubs and schools. KNZB asks businesses to contribute towards the cost of bags and gloves that they require for their clean-up.

“This clean up is a chance for New Zealanders to tidy our backyard, to put the clean back into clean and green,” says KNZB Clean UP Week organiser, Barry Lucinsky.

“Litter abatement is the first step in instilling community pride. Our programme has groups of volunteers who do this sort of thing all year round. We hope by highlighting it for one week a year to build those numbers so community pride becomes second nature to all, rather than to the present few.”

Mr Lucinsky says he is pleased to have the Ministry of Justice support the clean up with its Graffiti Free Week because the aims of both programmes are so close.
“Keep New Zealand Beautiful has been battling graffiti for years and now we’re joined by the Ministry of Justice. Together we’re a heck of a lot more influential than apart. There’s nothing makes a neighbourhood more depressing that the illiterate scrawls of taggers on every fence and building. You don’t have to put up with that and this Graffiti Free Week is our statement that it has to end.”

From experience, Keep New Zealand Beautiful knows that many volunteers in the graffiti and clean up events won’t stop when the week ends.

“This will be the start of a whole lot of pride in their community and neighbourhood for a lot of participants and long may it continue,” Mr Lucinsky says.

ENDS