Bags of rubbish collected from beach
A good turnout of locals and friends netted many bags of rubbish from the beach to the south of Pukerua Bay this morning.
The clean up was organised by the Sustainable Coastlines group (thanks Ben, Oliver and the rest of the crew), with the support of Kathmandu.
Around 30 people started from the pou at 10am and heading along towards Wairaka Rock with bags and a determination to strip the beach clear of rubbish.
The group got almost halfway along the coast to Hongoeka and brought back all the rubbish they found, apart from a very long, heavy plastic pipe and a large sheet of plastic that they couldn’t manage along with all the bags. But they did manage to bring back a large plastic float, which took two people to carry.
A lot of the rubbish was small pieces of plastic, often mixed in with the seaweed near the waterline – hard to see, but if you took your time, you could find a lot of it. There were a lot of bottle caps, small wrappers, pieces of string or rope and lids of all sorts. The pieces might seem too small to bother with, but small pieces are the right size for fish and seabirds to try to eat, and therefore dangerous.
Most of it appeared to have washed up on the beach, rather than being dropped there, but it all comes from somewhere – washed down a stormwater drain or blown into the sea from somewhere – so it’s a good reminder that it is just as important to pick up the small pieces of litter as the big pieces.
Well done everyone, and thanks for all the hard work.
Signing in before heading out
Some of the pieces of plastic were very small and hard to see
Some of the larger pieces were very obvious
Bags filled up quickly with all sizes of rubbish
Just some of the rubbish collected
The workers enjoying a tasty lunch laid on by the organisers