Our Fellowship Chairman today was PP Paul and our Sergeant-at-Arms was PP George. Our Sergeant-at-Arms managed to collect $600 between the raffle and fines.

President Thomas announced that the Inner City Meeting will be held on 23^rd August at Excelsior Hotel. Our club will sponsor half of the fee and member also can get a make up.  The Charity Ball for the Hepatitis B Project will be held on 21^st Oct (Sat) at Regal Airport Hotel, our club will reserve one table. Another event, the Interact Variety Show 2006, will be held on 19 August at HITEC, Kowloon Bay. It is a fund raising event for UNICEF. Finally, District PR Workshop will be held on 26th August (Sat) at Shangri-la Hotel, TST, Kowloon 

The speaker of today was Mr. Thierry Chan; his topic was “Caring for HK’s Beautiful Beaches and International Coastal Cleanup”.  Littering and ocean dumping are age-old problems.  Many litters are buoyant, allowing them to travel for thousands of miles, endangering ocean ecosystems and wildlife along the way. Our coastlines are among the dirtiest in the world.  International Coastal Cleanup (ICC) showed us the reality of the situation where, over the course of just one month, 1,286 volunteers collected 8.1 metric tonnes of marine litter from 26.7 km of coastline.   The reason that we have a lot of marine litter is because Hong Kong people suffer from a serious ‘PICK-UP AFTER ME’ syndrome.  They have developed the habit of expecting the public rubbish collection system to pick-up after them both on land and at sea.  If Hong Kong people do not change this habit, there will always be more rubbish on land and at sea than the public service system can handle.

Improving government cleaning and pick-up services is NOT the answer.  To make our sea and shoreline cleaner, we have to become more responsible for our activities and considerate of other beach users.

Civic Exchange has been acting as the official International Coastal Cleanup (ICC) Coordinator in Hong Kong since 2003.  Although the official ICC date is scheduled on every 3^rd weekend of September, data collected from cleanups from mid-September to late October will also be taken into account for this global event.