Harbouring our rubbish
Ten tonnes of Lower Hutt rubbish – everything from syringes to cigarettes butts – is finding its way into Wellington Harbour every year.
The rubbish is entering the harbour via sumps and drains and Hutt City Council is placing nets and traps on stormwater drains in a trial to collect rubbish people discard.
Waste minimisation adviser Sandy Beath-Croft said groups such as Plogging in Petone and the Petone Beach Clean-up Crew did a great job.
The council could support them by making sure rubbish did not enter the stormwater system and, ultimately, the harbour. ‘‘As a council we spend a lot of time and effort collecting rubbish so it is important we invest in solutions to mitigate the problem at source and continue to educate our community about not dropping rubbish into drains.’’
Nets and traps have been installed at a number of sites in Seaview, Jackson St, Naenae and Taita.
Once gathered, the rubbish is taken to WelTech where students count and weigh it.
City sustainability and resilience manager Jorn Scherzer wants to identify the best way to trap rubbish and the type of rubbish ending up in drains. One system being trialled is a net developed by New Zealand company Duraflex Distribution.
It has been placed across the entrance of a stormwater pipe in Fraser Park and has proved effective, especially in heavy rain.
‘‘We get balls, dolls, polystyrene, leaves, cigarette packets and butts, drink bottles, plastic packets and recently a couple of syringes,’’ Scherzer said.
An early prototype of a device developed by Upper Hutt manufacturing company Leda was also being used to stop bottles and cans getting into sumps.
Scherzer said the trial was not just about stopping 10 tonnes of rubbish entering the harbour.
Identifying the source and type of rubbish was information that could be used to educate the public.
The council is also reviewing its open crate kerbside recycling.
Wind-blown recycling is a major problem and the results of the trial will help inform councillors looking at the option of wheelie bins.
‘‘We have a growing culture of muppets who think it is OK to use the ground as a rubbish bin.’’
Lorraine Shaab
Petone Beach Clean-Up Crew
Beath-Croft said the material collected had been an eye opener – medical waste, lots of polystyrene foam packing and food packaging, ropes, broken glass, processed wood, a live eel and plastic ties but there was one clear winner.
‘‘The big winner was cigarette butts, which was not a surprise.’’
There was a wide spread of sources for the material ending up on Petone beach. She found, for instance, there was a lot of material that had originated from building sites.
It also identified the need to educate people about food waste and packaging. There were clearly a lot of people who threw away takeaway packaging without trying to find a bin, she said.
Scherzer said although the information gathered was valuable, it was unrealistic to think traps and nets were the ultimate answer.
There are 10,000 sumps in Lower Hutt and the cost of putting in traps would be high. That was why educating people how to stop littering was important, he said.
That is a sentiment Lorraine Shaab from the Petone Beach CleanUp Crew agrees with. ‘‘It is totally disheartening,’’ she said.
‘‘We have a growing culture of muppets who think it is OK to use the ground as a rubbish bin.
‘‘I don’t know where that comes from.’’ mentality
A retrospective exhibition of Walters’ works titled New Vision was recently displayed in galleries around the country and finished at Te Papa.
‘‘I think his work is increasingly admired and for us in the art market the way he painted means his works are extremely rare. He could take seven years to finish a painting. So it is a pretty major piece.’’
The painting had been held by a private Auckland collector for the past 30 years.
Walters was well known for his work that matched European modernist art with Ma¯ ori and Pacific art forms. This included his use of the Ma¯ ori koru motif. Walters first became interested in using Ma¯ ori designs in the 1940s after being influenced by fellow artist Theo Schoon and his first koru paintings can be traced to the 1950s. But Walters’ work was not recognised until the 1970s. He died in 1995.
Walters’ works have been both praised by the art community and criticised by commentators for cultural appropriation. Plumbly said he was aware of the criticism of the late artist.
In 2016, Art & Object sold a Colin McCahon painting for $1.35 million, setting a record for the most expensive piece of artwork sold at auction in New Zealand.