Conservation Week spring clean for Castlecliff Beach

Mika Wilson and Jasmine Hessell were part of a group of 25 cleaning up Castlecliff Beach for conservation week. Photo/ Bevan Conley

Castlecliff Beach has had a spring spruce-up as part of Conservation Week.

The Department of Conservation ran the beach clean-up on Saturday, one of three local events for the week, with volunteers collecting about 180kg of rubbish over the afternoon.

DoC community ranger Scotty Moore said it was about fitting in the "love my backyard" theme for Conservation Week.

"The idea was to get the community to come out and do something for one of their backyard's spaces," he said.

Mr Moore said about 25 people braved a strong wind to take part in the clean-up.

"It was pretty harsh so I'm really grateful for the people that did come and participate," Mr Moore said.

About 180kg of material was collected, not including other material which was able to be recycled.

"We had the recycling truck from Sustainable Whanganui there so we tried to recycle as much as we could," he said.

"But we're not sure how much recycling we collected because that went straight into the trailer. We did collect quite a lot of bottles and cans."

Mr Moore said it was important the environment out at the beach was cared for.

"As well as a place for people to do recreation and enjoy the outdoors, it's also habitat for blue penguins, fur seals and migratory birds," he said.

"It's a special natural space, close to Whanganui, and frequented by people."

Despite what was collected Mr Moore said Castlecliff Beach was in a good state in terms of rubbish.

"A lot of people commented on how there actually wasn't much rubbish out there as expected," he said.

"The community out there walk around picking up rubbish so they're already looking after our backyard and other groups do this too."