One person’s trash might be another’s treasure, but Roland Davies said the three kilograms of cocaine found by one of his litter collectors at Freshwater Beach “scared the daylights out of both of us”.
An earlier clean-up of the beach unearthed pornographic Polaroid pictures surrounded by empty condom wrappers, which Davies said was “pretty comical and random”.
“Someone found a $100 note once,” he said. “That’s, like, just as good as it gets.”
Roland Davies dispenses free coffees from a barista machine installed in an old fire truck to beachgoers who collect a bucket of rubbish.Credit: Kate Geraghty
Davies usually ends up with buckets of plastic, empty alcohol bottles and fishing gear from the litter collections he organises several times a week on Sydney’s northern beaches.
“There’s always bottle caps, cigarette butts, plastic straws – the usual suspects,” he said.
Among his volunteer litter collectors was Susan Rundle, who planned to go surfing but ended up collecting mostly tiny pieces of plastic from the beach and car park.
Rundle said she was not surprised by the amount of litter, which often washed up on the beach after heavy rains.
Roland Davies talks with volunteer litter picker Jasmine Abel during a cleanup at Freshwater Beach. Credit: Kate Geraghty
Davies, who used to run a cafe in Chatswood, rewards his volunteers with a cup of coffee made with an espresso machine installed in an old fire truck called Trish, which he has converted to run on vegetable oil.
After a morning of making coffees in exchange for buckets of rubbish, the 32-year-old Davies separates recyclable material and disposes what has been collected from beachgoers.
It is a full day’s work by the time he washes coffee cups and buckets and drives Trish around to replenish batteries depleted by his espresso machine.
“I don’t expect this to solve pollution, but at the very least it makes people who think the beach is clean that it’s not hard to find rubbish,” he said.
Plastics are the most common form of litter collected from Sydney beaches. Litter on harbour beaches such as Manly Cove and Clontarf is often from stormwater run-off, while ocean beaches such as Freshwater tend to receive litter carried from ocean currents.
Northern Beaches Mayor Sue Heins said there were many wonderful volunteers like Davies who gave up their time to collect and remove litter from our beaches, lagoons and bushland.
“The best way to avoid pollution on our beaches is to avoid single-use plastics and disposable food and drink packaging in the first place,” she said.
Davies is an evangelist about cleaning up beach pollution, but does not rush to judge the probable culprits responsible for the empty alcohol bottles, discarded fishing gear and overflowing bins.
It is a noble cause, but hardly lucrative. Davies estimates he has spent $100,000 – his life savings – on the fire truck and plying people with free coffees in exchange for rubbish.
He worked casual jobs until last year when he decided to have “a crack at this full time” by renting a warehouse to set up a cafe and recycling exhibition as part of his not-for-profit environmental organisation Emu Parade.
His long-term ambition is to expand his litter collection beyond the northern beaches with a fleet of vehicles equipped with espresso machines.
“There are worse things to spend money on for sure,” he said. “But it definitely has cost, like, everything I have.”
Davies sold his cafe in 2019 to go surfing but picked up rubbish for a whole month instead “because I got very sidetracked by how much there was”.
It turned out to be therapeutic, he said, relieving the distress he felt by how the beach he had planned to surf at had been trashed.
“Once I saw the volume of rubbish around, I started picking it up and then realised that I actually felt really good. It was actually this sort of cathartic thing to do.”
Davies is momentarily stumped when asked why he dedicates so much time and his life savings to cleaning up after other beachgoers.
“That’s all I wanna do,” he said. “It makes me feel better about my position in the world, what I’m doing to help.”