Plastic pollution challenge

The gauntlet has been laid down to clean up Palmerston North’s waterways under a new plastic pollution challenge.

The project has just been launched at Massey University, and is meant to discover how much plastic finds its way into the Manawatu¯ River and the sea via the city’s streams and stormwater.

The group is using ‘‘citizen science’’, which is using friends and family, school children, community groups and business people to collect plastic in streams, then collate data about plastic pollution.

They will work at 40 sample sites from different sections of the Mangaone and Kawau streams, measure the findings and then the community can design solutions to environmental problems.

For the next couple of months, they will collect all the litter, even small pieces, and measure the weight, then compare sites.

Jonathon Hannon, of the Zero Waste Academy, said he had been riding his bicycle with his son along the Manawatu¯ River pathway near Ruamahanga Cres and noticed plastic in a drain.

‘‘It’s a drain that runs directly into the Manawatu¯ River.’’

He and his son collected the waste in waterways for a school project and found plastic bags, bottles, cans, food plastic, plastic wrap and polystyrene going into the water.

Heike Schiele, the co-ordinator of Source to Sea Environmental Network Manawatu¯ , said Palmerston North was the first city in New Zealand to research and develop a plastic pollution strategy to solve urban water quality problems. ‘‘When the river is not well, the land is not well, the people are not well.’’