Paul Prentice's 10,000 kilograms of rubbish

Paul Prentice at Aitken Creek litter clean up

Paul Prentice is hard to find. Obviously not a fan of telephones, social media, or emails, I realised if I wanted to talk to him, I’d have to catch him on one of his litter cleanups in the wilds of Merri Creek.

Sunday morning at Craigieburn’s Aitken Creek (a tributary of the Merri), can be a lonely place, but, peering into the bushes, I realised I had finally tracked him down  when I could see the shape of a bike with multiple bags attached near the creek bank.

Paul’s routine Merri Creek clean ups happen once a month on a Sunday. Their date and designated spot can be found on the FoMC calendar. However, on any given Sunday, Paul will ride his bike, catch the train or drive to the Merri Creek, or the Darebin Creek, or one of their tributaries and remove rubbish from the waterways.

Encouraged to join in, to stop, as Paul puts it “Mother Nature from choking on litter”, I began to pick up plastic bags, packets of chips and tetra packs. Alarmingly, many of the older pieces of rubbish shattered into a thousand tiny pieces when disturbed. It is painfully clear that small fragments from decomposing containers and bags, are everywhere. If left in the environment, these microplastics will enter waterways, then food chains, then into all creatures great and small.

This is why Paul’s work is so vital. Not only do the creeks look much better without piles of soiled plastic floating on the surface, but he is working to save us all from loss of biodiversity, species extinction and from the cancers increasingly attributed to microplastics entering the blood stream.
A recent BBC television show (Joanna Lumley’s Danube) stated that 80% of plastics found in the ocean have entered via river and creek catchments. Removing rubbish early on from the water system, is something we all can, and should, do. A lot of rubbish is reachable in creeks. Less so in rivers and oceans.

A back of the envelope calculation suggests that if Paul has been collecting rubbish 40 Sundays a year, for 50 years, at 5 kilos of rubbish at a time, he has pulled 10,000 kilos of rubbish out of creeks. He has spent 2,000 hours doing rubbish collection and he has sent around 2000 kilograms to recycling. Yes, Paul takes home, washes and sends to the depot all glass and plastics with the recycling stamp that he finds. There is no bridge too far.

Paul is also involved in weeding, attending many FoMC events.  He says “Plants can reproduce, but they can’t get rid of weeds and it’s more interesting than planting because you have to know what you’re doing.” Over time Paul has also been involved in many FoMC campaigns and many consultations with local councils and infrastructure projects.

His dedication to the task has given him an encyclopaedic knowledge of most of Melbourne’s creeks and bridges. He rattles off some of his favourites: Diamond Creek, Edgars Creek, Edwardes Lake and Central Creek, with recollections of how much rubbish he found, wildlife he has seen, and recommendations for treats at local milk bars.

He is a man passionate about his mission, undeterred by weather, occasional lack of fellow collectors and/or fanfare. He continues to do invaluable work, whatever the circumstance, and for that we thank and admire him greatly. Feel free to join him once a month, or make a spontaneous litter clean up of your own, next time you’re by the creek. 

The more the Merri-er!

Rubbish in the Merri Creek near Normanby Road, Thornbury