What to expect

• Hear from the KooyongKoot Alliance about what other Friends groups downstream are busy doing to keep their patch along the creek clean, green, and revegetated. Plus, learn how they are collaborating to heal the KooyongKoot, its waterways, land and ecosystems for current and future generations to enjoy.
   
• Learn all about Melbourne Water's new Litter Prevention Toolkit – Bin it or Bring it Home! Drawing on behaviour change research and insights from the community, Melbourne Water's toolkit empowers local councils, community groups and organisations to tackle litter! The toolkit promotes litter prevention behaviour through clear, universal messaging and includes posters, bin and floor decals, social media post and litter prevention discussion guides.
   
• Discover Rethink Recycling's RUSTIE, the solar-powered education trailer, for hands-on, circular economy learning that shows how reducing single-use plastics and landfill waste helps protect local waterways. Delivered by Rethink Recycling, whose programs empower communities to rethink waste and take action for healthier habitats and thriving biodiversity along the KooyongKoot corridor. Come down, meet the team, and see how they turn plastic waste into a valuable resource. Feel free to bring your clean plastic lids and watch how we give waste a second life!
   
• Meet The Connies, the performance troupe with a passion for Australian flora and fauna. They will be sharing a series of biodiversity cards with species found in and around Blackburn Creeklands, Gardiners Creek and Yarra River, including wetland and woodland birds, butterflies, aquatic invertebrates, frogs, native fish, reptiles, monotremes, marsupials and more. Plus find out all about stormwater pollution and human effects on the natural world.
   
• Join the Friends of Blackburn Lake Sanctuary on a walk to the wetlands, and see what the regeneration project has accomplished so far, and how you can take part. Plus the Waterwatch team will have some real live waterbugs to search for and identify - waterbugs need clean water too!
   
• Learn from the EPA how to report and prevent pollution events, with information, displays and activities for kids, of all ages. Check out how the EPA Response Vehicle works! It also measures noise and air pollution, and soil contamination too!
   
• Learn all about microplastics, where they come from and more from the Yarra Riverkeepers Association and the Port Phillip EcoCentre citizen scientists.
   
• Pledge to reduce single-use plastics in exchange for a free sausage from Scouting organisation, 1ST/8TH Blackburn Scouts. 
   
• Have a chat with Council's Waste and Environment Education teams, ask your questions, and take part in a host of fun, eco-friendly activities.

Please note this is a rubbish-free event. Complimentary tea, coffee, milk and hot water will be available, so please bring your own coffee cup!