Shattered glass makes popular beach unsafe

Shattered beer bottles left on popular beach pose threat barefooted beachgoers.

LITTERING: Mallika Foord is concerned about rubbish on the south end of Coolum Beach. Photo: John McCutcheon

COOLUM is known for its beautiful coastline, but the typically clean beach has been littered with unsafe shattered glass, cigarette butts and cans.

Owner of Divinity Wellbeing and Coolum resident Mallika Foord stumbled across the problem five months ago after going for a walk along the southern end where rocks were littered with “hundreds of cigarette filters”.

Ms Foord said since then people had begun smashing beer bottles which could “slice open your foot”.

“I don’t want to stop anyone from having a good time, but it would be lovely if people could come down, have a good time and take their stuff away with them,” she said.

“I walk with bare feet, there is children that walk with bare feet and to make the beach unsafe is unfair for everyone else.”

The regular beach goer said most of the community “leads by example”, cleaning up the mess whenever they can but a new bin in the area would go a long way.

“I think we live in community of eco warriors that are very connected to nature and they are constantly keeping it nice for all of us despite the people that maybe don’t respect it as much as we do,” she said.

“A lot of the Coolum community clean it up every single day so putting a council bin down here on the walkway would mean we would at least have somewhere to put the rubbish ourselves rather than carrying broken glass 500 meters.”

The Sunshine Coast Council arranged a clean-up crew to attend the site and said keeping the coast clean was a team effort.

“Council has more than 3000 public bins across the region and strongly encourages our community to use them,” a Sunshine Coast Council spokesman said.

“We are all responsible for helping to keep the Sunshine Coast litter free to help protect our natural environment and keep our community safe.”

Ms Foord said a sign could also be introduced to deter litterers.

“If it’s a sign it has to be very kind not something that says, ‘don’t litter’ it needs to be something that says, ‘keep this area as beautiful as you’ because if they are doing that [littering] they probably have depression or something like that,” she said.

“Anything that they are smashing outwards is probably smashing inward as well so I don’t have any anger towards these people I just I want them to be happier.”

Passionate about the environment Ms Foord said she just wants to protect Coolum’s natural beauty.

“This is my home, so your home is where your heart is, and you want your home to remain as beautiful as possible,” she said.

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