About 40 staff of OCBC Bank (Malaysia) Berhad recently made their way to Pantai Kelanang in Selangor to deal with deposits of a different and unattractive sort.

You can never imagine the sort of rubbish that turns up when you clean up a beach.

Their efforts saw the beach become a lot cleaner minus the 340 kilogrammes of waste that the bankers had collected and placed in 35 bags.

They had earlier spent almost five hours working in groups of three walking along the 1.5-kilometre stretch of beach to pick up bottles, straws, general waste and even fishing nets. They later sorted out the trash.

The volunteers, all from the Bank’s Legal and Regulatory Compliance departments, were guided by facilitators from My Clean Beach, a programme driven by a private enterprise to clean up Malaysian beaches and instil awareness about beach preservation for environmental protection and tourism.

According to OCBC Bank’s Chief Compliance Officer Ms Doreen Keng, who worked alongside her colleagues on the effort, the initiative was part of the Bank’s ongoing sustainability efforts.

“We strive to be more involved in the community, going beyond simply providing competitive banking products and services to meeting the other pertinent needs around us as well, in this case sustainability.

“I was pleased to see my colleagues working really hard relentlessly for five hours in an effort we will remember for a long time to come. It is not easy collecting waste that has been long-deposited along the beach. So, we would all do well to remember how much better it would be for this kind of waste not to end up there in the first place. Beach-goers must remember to leave nothing but footprints whenever they head out to the great outdoors,” she said.

The OCBC Bank staff expressing their sheer joy at having rid the beach of 340kg of waste deposited into 35 bags.

Also present was Head of Legal Ms Tan Kiat Jane who said the whole exercise taught the group to appreciate the environment a lot more and to protect it by simply keeping it clear of unnecessary materials.

“We are pleased to have done our little bit to return at least part of the beach to its pristine origin. Apart from the satisfaction gained from having done whatever we could, the event really helped us to bond together as members of a team,” she said.