On Friday 26th April, volunteers from 13 iGaming companies, along with family and friends, came together to clean the environment around the stunning Ghadira Bay beach and Nature Reserve. The clean-up, in celebration of – and as Malta official participants for – Earth Day 2024, was a collaboration between our volunteers and Nature Trust Malta, plus the Ghadira Nature Reserve and Foresta 2000 Reserve under management of Birdlife Malta.
We had established base camp on the sand between our beach flags in front of Sundancer Kiosk, and people began to arrive from 14:30, for the 15:00 start. From iGaming came volunteers from Aspire Global, Bet365, Betsson, Betway, Bragg, Casumo, EveryMatrix, Games Global, Glitnor, Kindred, UniBet, 888/William Hill plus 1GameChanger Studio, who as well as joining in the cleanup were also our official media partners for the day, tasked with documenting the event photographically and on video – thanks Vlad Dobrovolskyi for a great job!
Originally planned for 19th April, but postponed due to gale force winds, the cleanup was in two parts – a litter density investigation of a stretch of beach under the direction of Nature Trust’s Angelique Lofaro, and a traditional cleanup of the remaining beach sections plus the boundaries of Ghadira Nature Reserve and the Foresta 2000 Nature Reserve, carried out together with Birdlife’s Vera Tokmakova and volunteer Danielle Azzopardi.
The investigation required the scouring of a 100m x 20m section of the beach for any man-made objects, and sorting and cataloguing of every find, no matter how small, for uploading into databases supporting research into beach litter around the EU. We had tables set up on the beach, with 10 sorting volunteers, including Rob Jones from NoID, his daughter Natasha plus friend Tijana from Eko Skola-Mosta Secondary School, and Nature Trust’s Hayley Acreman, plus volunteers from several iGaming teams.
Twenty people armed with buckets brought their finds to the tables, which ended up being moved to a sheltered spot to avoid the smaller objects being blown away in the gathering breeze. The farther stretches of the beach were cleaned in the traditional way, with all litter objects being placed in bin bags and put aside for weighing.
Across the coast road, volunteers were busy filling sack after sack with plastic, glass, wood and metal refuse from the impenetrable vegetation along the nature reserve boundary, while more were dispatched up to the Foresta 2000 area with the same purpose; to clear years of ingrained trash from the roadside’s trees and bushes, with some entering into the area under the watchful eye of the Malta Ranger Unit, to clean the boundary from the inside – it being nesting season we were careful not to disturb the avian inhabitants.
As each sack was filled, it was placed at one of two prearranged collection points, and carefully weighed and documented. These points were outside the local police station and at the entrance to the Foresta 2000 area, where CleanMalta were scheduled to collect them at the end of the event. Larger objects were also weighed when possible, or estimated and added to the total. We were joined by Patrick Hulsen, who was soon helping move the heavy objects across the road, and who made a video interview with event organiser Glen Smith live from the beach.
At 17:30 we packed away the sorting tables, weighed the last of the sacks and transferred them to the collection point, and began to move towards Munchies, the location of our traditional post-cleanup mingle and refreshments, where soon cool drinks were being enjoyed, food was ordered and the sound of satisfied voices were soon to be heard. Angelique had brought the total weight from the beach investigation, and added to the totals from the cleanup we could soon celebrate the fact the 700 kgs of trash had been removed!
She also told us details about the other work done by Nature Trust Malta, including monitoring turtle nests and rehabilitating injured turtles, hedgehogs and other wildlife – an amazing organisation doing great and important work.
CleanMalta arrived promptly and took away the day’s haul. An amazing day, and some amazing results – well done and thank you to everyone who participated! More photos from the event can be seen on our Instagram feed here: https://www.instagram.com/whyigaming/