In the Nelson Mandela Bay neighbourhood of Wells Estate everyone knows that if Dolly Mitchell is close, you do not drop a piece of plastic on the ground.

“We tell them straight,” she says. “Who do they think must pick it up?”

For the past two years, Mitchell, Marie Tiervry and Berenice Koemoete have been part of a team of five who have picked up 38,000 bags of plastic waste from the banks of their beloved Swartkops River as part of a project run by the Zwartkops Trust.

They receive a stipend for their work from Spar Eastern Cape.

“Marie told me what she was doing and I said yes, I will come help. I didn’t have a job at the time,” Mitchell said.

“It is very dirty around here,” she explains with a wave of her hand. Despite the howling wind, they are picking up plastic around the train tracks running close to the river.

“The wind will blow all this rubbish into the water,” she said. “We see a lot of plastic, bottles, foam trays, nappies. We pick it up. It is not a nice job to do, but it must be done.

“But if I stand here and look, it makes my heart happy because it is clean.” She points to the field on the sides of the train tracks where they are working on Monday:

“It was very bad here this morning. The place was full of litter. It isn’t something that is nice to see.

“The municipality have come to fetch bags already today and we have some more here for them. It makes me happy to see how clean the river is. We want the tourists to see a nice, clean place.

“We are piemping (telling on) those who litter. I am very strict. Look at this place, it is clean now. Watch now, in two days’ time it will be full of rubbish again. People come here to dump their rubbish.

“You find some terrible things when you clean up these pieces of land. Let me tell you, there are a lot of snakes here. I will never be friends with a snake. We have found three dead bodies already. If I see a dead person we phone immediately. We pick up the dead dogs too.

“If I can get one thing it will be for an end to the use of plastic bags. Here where it is so windy you will find the trees full of plastic bags, then we have to climb to the high branches to get the plastic off.”

Marie Tiervry, 56, said the project started when they met a man on a boat while fishing for food.

“We were busy fishing one day. I wasn’t working. A man on a boat came to us at the river and asked if we don’t want to help him clean the river banks. I said: ‘Sir, I will come help you.’

“In the beginning, it was heavy on the back to bend like that all the time, but we have gotten used to it now. Every one of us tries to fill 25 bags every day.”

Tiervry said some days they run out of rubbish to pick up.

“But we search for it, every little bit of plastic. You can always find more if you are looking. I like filling all my bags every day that we work.”

Berenice Komoete, 38, said she likes to work at the riverside every day.

“I like the breeze and I like looking at the river. I love my job. I am not looking for another job.

“We pick up a lot of plastic 2-litre bottles and the bottle tops and the lollipop sticks – you won’t believe how many we pick up every day. Now that we have learned that plastic in the water can cause all sorts of illnesses, so we want to make it safe for all of us,” she said.

Zwartkops Conservancy conservation officer Dale Clayton said while the project has been running for longer he started keeping score two years ago.

“We have just passed the 38,000 mark,” he said. “We are averaging 69 bags a day with four or five people working.”

He said they were grateful for the financial support from Spar Eastern Cape.

“The ladies are briefed to pick up plastic and rubber – anything that doesn’t degrade. We can see a very big difference in the river already.

“Let me tell you, it is not an easy job. Anybody who has tried to open a plastic garbage bag in strong winds will know it is almost impossible to do.

“We only stop on days that the wind blows more than 40 km/hour because then you can’t put the rubbish in the bag.

“The Zwartkops Estuary is very important for the ecology of the area. It is tidal for 14km. Whatever plastic comes down the Motherwell Canal comes into the river and when the tide goes out it goes into the sea. Fish, turtles, dolphins all eat it.

“The most important thing is that the little fish in the estuary eat the broken-up pieces of plastic. That is a real killer. The fish think they are full but meantime they are starving and dying. We are talking about a lot of fish. It also gets into the meat and it is not good if someone catches that to eat,” he said.

“We like to catch the plastic at its source, so when it has rained more than 50mm we run to the Motherwell Canal. The last time this happened we collected 932 bags of plastic rubbish in two weeks.

“We have a very good relationship with the municipality. They collect the bags for us. They know us so well by now they come to collect without us even asking.

“We also clean for up to a kilometre away from the river because the rubbish blows into the river. We check all the outlets as much as we can.

“We are engaging with the municipality, provincial and national departments to try and convince them that we must change from a throw-away society to a recycle-society. We want to start with those people who live near the Motherwell Canal.

“Sadly, it is more convenient for them to throw the rubbish in the canal rather than to push it to where the trucks come to collect. Most of the people we ask have no idea where the canal goes to. It is also a problem if the municipality doesn’t collect for two weeks. Then they just throw everything into the canal. But I don’t blame them. What else must they do?” he asked. MC