How Sello's Stand Against Pollution Is Saving the Apies River

Photo Credit: Supplied

One dedicated nature conservationist, Sello Maluleka, has traded complaining for concrete action, rallying volunteers to pull 57 bags of waste from the polluted Apies River.

Pretoria, South Africa (29 September 2025) – The world has its share of problems, but there comes a time when we must stop complaining about everything that isn’t going right and start acting. To actively forge a path toward a solution.

For nature conservationist Sello Maluleka, the problem was heavily polluted rivers, and the solution was straightforward yet significant: to clean them up!

Good Things Guy previously shared about his win in a local environmental competition and his mission to address the growing concern of litter and plastic pollution in the Apies River.

Last week, Sello hosted a second clean-up campaign, this time out of his own initiative, and was overjoyed by the public response and impact made.

“The event was a success, everything went well. We had support from some of Good Things Guy’s audience, which I really appreciated. We were also honoured to have the councillor and his team, medics and Metro Police on-site. Overall attendance was more than expected,” Sello tells us.

The team effort saw an impressive 57 bags of waste collected – a significant drop from the 83 bags collected from the previous initiative and a great indicator of the cleanups’ effectiveness.

“Our clean-up was cut short by the tree logs that were washed down from the upstream and stopped by the bridge.

“These tree logs remain our biggest challenge at the moment, and disturb the river flow. A promise was made by the municipality that the tree logs would be removed, but they are still there,” Sello shares.

He added that the biomonitoring results from tests done in the Apies River still show that the health of the river is still deteriorating – likely from chemical pollution.

Sello is currently appealing for assistance from people or companies that are keen to walk this journey with him to assist with tackling the tree logs at the river, as well as sponsorships for PPE, gloves, masks, waders, steel rakes and refreshments for volunteers to use during river cleanups.

“I would like to thank everyone, the organisations that were present, and the learners from various schools and students from different universities who joined us. May we continue to fight for our environment.”

For more information or to support this cause, email Sello at [email protected]