Our ‘unhealthy culture’

New Zealand’s litter problem is getting worse, despite the best efforts of people on the frontline who are cleaning our beaches.

Sustainable Coastlines cofounder Camden Howitt said an unhealthy reliance on convenience foods and packaging was a major factor.

Trash on city streets, plastic in the sea, and illegal dumping are all part of the problem. In Auckland alone, litter cleanups cost almost $5 million a year.

‘‘It is getting worse, people are consuming more in New Zealand. We’re the 10th-largest consumer of waste in the world [per capita], which is gnarly.’’

Increasing consumption as individuals was causing the litter problem, Howitt said.

‘‘We can actually reduce it as consumers first, before intervention from the Government.’’

Howitt said as single-use plastics had become a part of daily life, people had developed an ‘‘unhealthy culture’’ relying on it.

‘‘The issue is urgent and increasing as we consume more plastic. I think there’s a massive increase in concern for how we’re going to change it.’’

In the 2017/18 National Litter Survey, paper items, snack food packaging and other plastic packaging were among the most common categories found.

‘‘They’re made to be used once, and they’re useless after that.’’

The real issue was the ‘‘convenience culture’’ and ‘‘throwaway’’ attitude people relied on, he said.

About 75 per cent of what Sustainable Coastlines found on beaches was single-use plastic.

‘‘At the top is an unfortunately vague category called plastics of unknown origin.’’

These are small fragments of broken plastic items, which have deteriorated and broken down with time, which could have already been in the sea for decades.

Howitt said they often called the plastic fragments ‘‘plastic sand’’.

The next most-common offender was plastic food wrap for items such as pies, potato chips, lollies, lollipops, and muesli bars.

The third-largest category for beach waste was bottle caps and lids, the fourth was polystyrene packaging and the fifth most common offender was plastic bags, Howitt said.

‘‘Plastic sand’’ could be found on any beach in New Zealand, he said. They had found extreme cases of it at Evans Bay, which bore the brunt of Wellington’s trash.

‘‘If anyone litters on the streets in Wellington it makes its way down that drain and goes in to the harbour and then it’s blown in to Evans Bay. Once it was more plastic than beach.’’

Ghost Fishing NZ founder and leader Rob Wilson said divers had recovered mopeds, TVs, bikes, mattresses, laptops, cellphones, fishing gear, and car batteries from the deep.

Wilson said most of it wasn’t accidental – it was dumped straight in the sea.

Littered coffee cup lids and bottle caps were travelling the drains from the streets and turning up on the South Coast in Wellington, he said.

To boot, Wellington Harbour was inundated with bottles – in June, their divers collected 971 bottles in just one hour.

Keep New Zealand Beautiful chief executive officer Heather Saunderson said that in the 1970s and 1980s, reducing litter was a massive topic, but it had now become a behaviour issue.

‘‘We really need to focus on putting that ‘be a tidy Kiwi’ mantra back in to education,’’ she said.

The Packaging Forum spokeswoman Lyn Mayes said people would see litter and feel licensed to litter too.

However, if people saw others picking up litter it could have a feeling that dropping trash was wrong, she said.