What happens when you mix cleaning up our town with challenges, trivia, a live leaderboard and a little friendly competition?
432 snaps, 385 challenges, 14 teams and a whole lot of rubbish removed from our community!
The Great Te Puke Spring Clean returned from 14–18 September 2026, but this year EPIC Te Puke decided to do things a little differently with the launch of our brand-new Spring Clean Challenge.
Using an interactive web app developed especially for the event by Seed Studio, teams could head out around Te Puke, complete challenges, upload photographic evidence, earn points and watch their progress on a live leaderboard throughout the week.
And Te Puke certainly rose to the challenge!
The Spring Clean Challenge by the Numbers
By the end of an incredible week:
🧤 14 teams had taken part
👥 42 registered participants joined the Challenge
📸 432 snaps were logged
✅ 385 challenges were completed
🏆 26,550 points were earned
🗑️ More than 30 bags of rubbish were collected
♻️ 191.5kg of litter was removed from Te Puke and our surrounding communities!
From roadsides and reserves to beaches, parks and neighbourhood streets, every bag, bottle and piece of litter added up to a massive 191.5kg less rubbish in our environment.
And those numbers don’t even include everyone who simply turned up to lend a hand at Friday’s Main Street Clean!
A pretty incredible result from one week of community action. 💚
Thank you very much for the opportunity for our students to be apart of something bigger than themselves. It was a really nice week of connection, caring for our town, and learning some lessons about waste along the way.
More Than Just Picking Up Rubbish
The idea behind the Challenge was to make cleaning up our community a little more fun while also encouraging people to really look at the environment around them.
Rather than simply heading out with a rubbish bag, participants were given missions that made them think, explore and actively search out litter.
Challenges ranged from cleaning up school zones, streets, gutters and storm drains to heading further afield for beach cleans at Maketu and Pukehina.
There were also challenges to find some of the weird and wonderful things that end up as litter, with bonus points up for grabs for discoveries such as a lone jandal, lost shoe, broken toy, old tyre, hubcap, fishing line or even a shopping trolley.
The variety kept teams looking in places they may not normally notice and gave them plenty of reasons to keep heading back out throughout the week.
Absolutely loved it very proud of everyone involved in both the clean up and the organizers, supporter group and funders. It was totally EPIC.
Putting Their Rubbish Knowledge to the Test
It wasn’t all about collecting.
Throughout the week we dropped new rubbish and recycling trivia challenges, encouraging participants to learn more about recycling, waste reduction and some of the organisations working behind the scenes to look after our local environment.
Teams had to find the answers, write them on something reusable or recyclable and upload a snap to earn their points.
We also worked some special sponsor and supporter challenges into the mix, giving participants an opportunity to learn about and thank the organisations that helped make the Spring Clean possible.
It meant that while teams were competing for points, they were also learning something along the way.
The Spring Clean Challenge was an absolute hit with the Te Puke Intermediate Eco class this year. We had lots of walking around the local area and collecting mountains of rubbish. Students really enjoyed the competetive aspect that the app brought to the challenge this year. We will definitley be back next year to go for gold!
Things Got Competitive!
The live leaderboard brought plenty of friendly competition to the week.
Laura the Explorer came out firing and established an early lead, but there were plenty of teams chasing her down as the week progressed.
By the time the final points were counted, Laura the Explorer held onto the top spot with an impressive 6,259 points, followed closely by Te Puke Intermediate with 6,127 points and Te Ranga Hawk Academy with 5,560 points.
Te Puke Keas, Cubs, Scouts and Venturers finished fourth, followed by The Sisters in fifth.
But while there could only be one leaderboard winner, every completed challenge meant another piece of rubbish removed from our community – so we’d call that a pretty good result all round!
The spring clean challenge was an enjoyable experience, getting out there into the local community cleaning up the roads and the town. It was extremely rewarding, based around a fun gamified concept and very worthwhile doing with families, school or community groups. Driving on the rural roads, one does not normally acknowledge the amount of rubbish on the roadside, but when you are competing in a challenge you begin to notice the amount of roadside rubbish there is. You begin to care more about helping the community and keep our roads clean as a result.
Finishing With a Main Street Clean & Pizza Party
The week wrapped up on Friday afternoon with our Main Street Clean & Pizza Party at The Daily Café.
Alongside teams who had been taking part in the Challenge all week, several other groups and community members came along specifically for the Main Street Clean, including Poutiri Trust, adding even more hands to the clean-up effort.
We also had a fantastic line-up of organisations join us for the afternoon, including Keep Te Puke Beautiful and Captain Cleanup, Envirohub Bay of Plenty, Sea Cleaners, Western Bay of Plenty District Council, the Pest Trap Library and MOWS, giving the community the opportunity to connect with and learn more about some of the great initiatives happening locally.
Radio 1XX also joined us for the afternoon with their Spin the Wheel, adding some extra fun to the festivities, and a big thank you goes to Te Puke Today, who generously donated two vouchers which we were able to give away as spot prizes.
After one final rubbish blitz around the town centre, everyone came back together at The Daily for pizza, activities and prizegiving.
It was the perfect way to finish a week that was ultimately about much more than collecting rubbish – it was about community, connection and taking pride in the place we call home.
Good to see the kids at the event and at this age level. Positive vibes. Event on the friday afternoon ran for just the right amount of time with pizza to finish off. Special appearance by Captain CleanUp was awesome!
A Huge Thank You 💚
A massive thank you to every school, business, organisation, community group, family and individual who took part. Whether you spent the entire week chasing points on the leaderboard or simply turned up on Friday, grabbed some gear and helped clean up – your mahi made a difference.
A special thank you also goes to the organisations that helped us bring the Great Te Puke Spring Clean and our new Challenge to life: Seed Studio, who developed the fantastic Challenge app; the Tauranga Western Bay Community Event Fund and Western Bay of Plenty District Council for their support; Trevelyan’s for supplying high-vis vests; Keep Te Puke Beautiful for supplying litter pick-up equipment; The Daily Café for helping us finish the week with a well-earned pizza party; and all of the organisations who came along and supported us on Friday.
And another thank you to Radio 1XX and Te Puke Today for adding a little extra fun to our Friday finale.
The points have been counted, the leaderboard has stopped moving and the rubbish bags have been collected – but hopefully the impact lasts a little longer.
Thanks Te Puke for getting stuck in, having some fun and helping us keep our town beautiful. 💚
Thank you for supporting Epic Te Puke to bring awesome events to our town, and helping to create a sense of belonging as a result.
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