Dirtbin Beachfront

Saturday 27 September 2008

My family and I are regular visitors to Battery beach, located between Suncoast Casino and the Blue Waters Hotel on Durban’s beachfront. This morning I went down to the beach to have a look at the surf and take my son for a walk on the promenade, what greeted us was a disgusting mess of broken glass, bottles and litter from some sort of carpark party that happened last night. The volume of the broken glass made it impossible to walk barefoot for fear of cutting our feet on all the glass, both in the carpark and entrance onto the beach. By Mike Frew

See a couple of pics that I took – what kind of heritage is the city creating by allowing this sort of public behavior? So much for the ‘zero tolerance’ campaign on our roads, there were no revelers left when I arrived at 7am, can you imagine how many completely wasted people were driving around the Durban beachfront last night and into the early hours?

In the short time I was there I saw six families arrive only to have to bail and look for another beach to try and enjoy their Saturday morning, two poor cyclists punctured both front and back tyres of their bikes and a surfer was sitting on the bonnet of his car trying to get the glass out of his feet. If it rains the shards of glass are going to land up on our beaches, and I’ll bet that people will be stepping on glass for some time to come. 

It’s disgusting and a sad indictment on the so called regeneration of our Durban beachfront, I really hope that Mr Sutcliffe and his cronies can put something in place to restrict this sort of thing going forward.

- Mike Frew

Well done on getting your pics & message to the front page of the Tribune today - that's the way to do it.

The council obviously did have a problem with the City Cleaners being on strike over the weekend otherwise they would normally have started cleaning up by 4am - however the Government Department of Environment should be looking at long-term solutions to discourage consumers from destroying the glass bottles in the first place.

As an example: If every Glass bottle had a "tax" imposed on it - where it was compulsory for the supplier to pay a "refund" of at least 50cents (like on Coke bottles) - then the product would have value and no-one would deliberately break any. This would also result in ANY bottles left lying around being collected by the unemployed (who already collect up all the cardboard and tin cans) to take in and exchange for cash. Its a "Big picture" scenario that will work. Its already worked for tin cans, you don't se any lying around anymore.

So, I am writing (another) letter to the Government to motivate that Breweries etc be forced to make all glass refundable. You can do the same and send your letter to them at: The department of Environment & Tourism: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Furthermore I’m sending these pictures to Heineken (their int'l head office, not just local) and SABreweries, along with the scan of the Tribune article so they can see what filth their products are creating. If these companies allocated a miniscule percent of their huge advertising budgets to rather focus on cleaning up the mess they create it would be far better for everyone.

I urge EVERY ONE OF You to Please make an effort and write your own short email about this subject to the Department and to the Brewers - and forward these same pics to them - so that they do get the message LOUD & CLEAR! Please pass this message on to as many people as you can to gather more weight.

Thanks
JM Tostee

Hi Mike

The beach front was a supreme mess. It is the worst I have ever seen it. I ride early from the Sun Coast practically every Saturday and Sunday. It is always a mess. This weekend was diabolical. There was so much filth and broken bottles, not to mention the drunken people who were urinating and shitting all over. It stank. There were people who were so drunk driving their vehicles. When I arrived at 05H15 there was a Metro cop at the circle near the Sun Coast and the swimming pool diverting the traffic away from the road between Sun Coast and Blue Lagoon. I told him to call his mates and start arresting people for drunk driving, drinking in public, shitting and pissing in public. His response was “no I can’t do that.”

On Sunday was a pretty big Triathlon event. It was the SUN COAST OLYMPIC DISTANCE TRIATHLON. This event was attended by all the top athletes from the country. Despite the clean up these athletes had puncture after puncture, There were approximately 25 athletes that punctured and of those 6 were in contention for prize money. Of those 6 athletes three were from JHB. These athletes paid R190-00 for entry fees, travelled to Durban, paid accommodation, and expenses for the weekend and they could not complete the race because the road was a mine field of glass. What a disgrace.

Amber Kilfoil is one of our sponsored athletes. She an 18 year Roxy girl who surfs Durban beach front as much as possible. She stood on glass whist coming out of the water between New Pier and Dairy and severed her tendons in her left foot. This has resulted in her having an operation to repair the tendons. She is in a cast and on crutches. The cast will come off shortly and her foot then goes into a moon boot for up to three months. She will remain on crutches as she cannot put pressure on the foot until it is healed. After that she will require physio treatment.

This broken glass problem extends off the beach front. The roads leading out from the beach front are littered with broken beer bottles. The drunken fools leave the beach front and discard their bottles out the windows while they are driving.

It is unacceptable that the City continue to allow this to happen. The law is getting broken at every turn. Surely some legal precedent can be set to force the authorities to act. I would like to know the cost to clean up the beach front after these clowns mess it up every weekend. What is the point of the City boasting these new cameras and the law is watching you. They can’t sort out any form of crime. They are pathetic. Put the old police force back and assemble the correct squad. Anyone who commits a crime no matter how small should be brought to justice. This will install discipline back to Durban.    

The problem is two fold. Firstly the City Of Durban is well aware of the filth problem and continues to turn a blind eye. They justify it by saying it is cleaned up by 09h00. It is not always cleaned up by then. That aside there are so many drunk driving offences happening right there. It is an easy problem to fix. Secondly the problem can be avoided. Do not allow them to sleep, shit, piss, braai, drink and braai in public like that. I remember when we were kids and went to celebrate New Years on the beach front. We were not allowed to drink in public. It is still an offence to drink in public. It should be a NO NO. I have many of my International principles that visit our office every year. They cannot believe the filth on the beachfront and they travel all over the world. I now accommodate them on the Berea and keep them well away from the beach front. Locals are over it. Up country tourists and athletes are over it. International visitors take back with them a memory of filth and disgust. I have been in Durban all my life. I travel globally extensively. I am not proud to be a Durbanite. I am very angry and disappointed at the deterioration in Durban.

Arthur Limbouris