JINDABYNE'S Petra Richter is well known for her volunteer group ENJO Clean up Jindabyne who dedicate hours of their free time picking up rubbish along the side of roads.

Her biggest challenge and achievement yet was devoting five days, totalling 50 hours, collecting rubbish along the 63km stretch of road between Cooma and Jindabyne.

Joining in Petra’s dream to clean up the stretch of road, 25 community members volunteered their time including one couple who walked 6.5km picking up rubbish and filled a whole trailer worth of trash all by themselves.

Petra said she wanted to inspire the community to stop using single use plastics and coffee cups and chose to complete this ‘adventure’ a week before Clean up Australia day and plans to do it again next year but bigger and better this time.

“This to me was an adventure with purpose, if you can’t help support us by picking up rubbish then I would like people to support us in different ways such as taking a keep cup for your coffee rather than using single use coffee cups and saying no to take away,” Petra said.

“We received so much support from our community and we felt very valued in our efforts.

“We had many beeps and honks supporting us on these very hot days as well as members of the community dropping off food, lollies and cakes, it was truly amazing to see.”

A dream that started four-years-ago, Petra has been disappointed by the amount of rubbish discarded in all the wrong places and has made it her mission to continue the efforts of making Jindabyne clean again.

The group collected over five tonnes of rubbish, collected 280 bags of rubbish, filled six trailers full of trash, 15 yellow bins full of recyclables, two trailers with steel and one with tyres and $228 worth of bottles and cans that were recycled into the return and earn containers.

It took the volunteers six and a half hours to unload and recycle all material with five people helping.

Generous local business owners backed the group through donating their goods to say thank you for their valiant efforts.

Signs were donated to the group by Syd from Scout Design, Out of Bounds Pizza donated free pizzas after a long gruelling day, Meet Me Halfway coffee van gave out free coffees and the Wild Brumby Bar, Banjo Patterson Inn and Berridale Inn supplied cold beverages as well as many more businesses who contributed with donations.

A community member unable to help the volunteers donated $150 and another $20 in thanks to their commitment.

“I am all about putting focus on the community and working together to making a difference,” Petra said.

“I want people to start thinking about what they are taking and say no to all things plastic and realise the importance of recycling but most of all let’s stop littering.”

The money raised from the return and earn will go into the volunteer group account to use on petrol so the volunteers can continue travelling to make the Monaro trash free.

Next year the ENJO Clean-up Jindabyne volunteer group, with Petra leading the way, aims to turn the five days ‘adventure with a purpose’ into a bigger and better event with volunteers focussing on the right side of the road this time.

Petra will be speaking at the May Council meeting about her efforts and touching on the sponsorship form she applied for to get her own trailer and nets for future rubbish collection.

To join the volunteers efforts and keep up to date visit the ENJO Clean-up Jindabyne volunteer group Facebook page.