Cleaning up after yourself the key to reducing waste
One in three turtles recovered in New Zealand has died or is sick from eating plastic, so how can we change it?
Those who are cleaning our beaches and pulling trash out of waterways say everyone needs to reduce their waste – and clean up after themselves.
Sustainable Coastlines cofounder and lead Camden Howitt said if everyone picked up a piece of rubbish each day, it would make a difference.
But on top of that, people also needed to be using or buying at least one less piece of plastic daily, he said.
‘‘Go out there and consume one less piece of plastic every day. You have got to look at both sides of the equation, and that’s to reduce our use of plastic, and understand not everything goes away and it has an infinite life.’’
Hundreds of New Zealanders were already living nearly waste free, some could fit their entire month’s rubbish in a small jar.
Howitt said the reliance on plastic was already changing for the better.
Plastic became hugely popular in the middle of the 20th century but it’s only been the past decade or so that people started to notice the harm it could cause.
Now people were turning to so-called ‘‘alternatives’’, which were really just what had been used before plastic came around, Howitt said.
Ghost Fishing NZ founder and leader Rob Wilson said he suspected some people might not have the time, the money, or the transport to take their items to the tip, so they threw it all in the sea instead. Everyone needed better education.
‘‘I found a few kids in Houghton Bay [on Wellington’s south coast] throwing road cones in to the sea. I said to them that this is a marine area, which is actually being protected for you.’’
Unless people started to individually make changes in their daily life, litter would simply continue to accumulate, he said.
In February 2019, Keep New Zealand Beautiful will start a national litter survey, and all territorial authorities will take part in over six months of research.
It would be repeated every three years to gauge the extent of the litter problem