A Tauranga woman with a passion for keeping coastlines beautiful is encouraging locals to become part of an army of helpers who will be helping to clean our coast.

Love Your Coast Mount Beach clean-up offers the public the opportunity to come and assist in cleaning up some of the Bay's most beautiful shorelines.

Event organiser Breanna Roband says the event has spawned from her own love of the ocean.

'I love the coast, I love the ocean and I want to do my bit to help keep it clean and beautiful,” Breanna.

'I follow a charity called Sustainable Coastlines quite closely and love the work they do. They are about cleaning up but also education.

'The Love Your Coast idea came from them - they offer resources to people in communities to help them clean up by themselves.”

Breanna says the event is currently in its second year, and she plans to do it annually.

'Last year I wasn't happy with the numbers, but it was a lot more reactive last year and I didn't have enough time to promote and plan.

'We had about 20 people show up and collected just over 20kg of waste – most of that was recyclable.

'This year I'm hoping to get twice as many people involved. It's got great interest so I'm hoping if it's a nice day, we'll get a good crowd to come and help out.”

The clean-up will be based at Mount Drury, and anyone who participates is free to clean an area of their choice.

'People can either go from Mount Drury out to Leisure Island, Main Beach, south towards Rabbit Island or they can go and come back.

'Everyone has their own spaces that they like to go to or that they regularly visit along the coastline. Some people go to their local area to clean and then come back.

'We are encouraging people to clean where they want to go, and we just have to be careful about the rocks and the safety of the wildlife.”

She says the event attracts many locals and has even gained the interest of visitors.

'Last year we had some tourists that joined in after randomly seeing us on the streets and we had a lot of people with young kids, which I think is really important for education.

'This year we potentially may also have a local Girl Guide group come out and doing it as part of their training.

'It's really easy to be involved. We provide all the equipment and people can do it for as long or as short a period as they want.

'It doesn't require that you come along and collect massive amounts of waste, some people may not have the stamina to collect waste over a period of two hours, while others may. Every little bit counts.

'The main point is getting the waste away from the coastline and out of the ocean, because once it's in the ocean it's basically there forever. Most of what we collect is plastic and bottles.

'People who get involved tend to be shocked and surprised all at the same time.

'It's really interesting after the event to show people the waste. Last year, of all the bags that got brought in, I'd say 80 per cent was able to be recycled rather than going to a landfill.

'Another really important factor is education. It really makes people think twice about dropping litter or where they are putting it and what they are creating.

'If you're bringing something in that's not going to contribute to landfill and it's going to be reused, it is obviously much better than all the single use waste that we do produce.”

She says at the end of the clean-up, waste is audited and statistics are generated which get fed back to Sustainable Coastlines and volunteers.

The event has gathered the support of many local businesses who have donated prizes.

Anyone who comes along on the day will go in to the draw to win one of these prizes which will be drawn at the conclusion.

Love Your Coast Mount Beach clean-up will be based at Mount Drury (beachside) on Sunday November 5, from 1pm-4pm.

For more information, email Brenna on: projectsbybren@gmail.com