My Account
A national programme that is recording the amount of litter on New Zealand coastlines is seeking volunteers in Mangawhai and Te Arai to help keep track of trash.
Litter Intelligence is training citizen scientists across the country in an effort to get meaningful data on coastal rubbish pollution.
Programme coordinator Shelley Butt says to encourage the government to make regulation changes, the organisation is recording scientific data to show how behaviour in different communities can have an impact.
“It is interesting to see the different stories in the litter. For example, in Auckland Central there seems to be a lot of parking tickets and takeaway containers. In Coromandel, there is a lot of rubbish from aquaculture.”
Across the 90 sites that are being monitored so far, the average litter density is 427 items per 1000 square metres, but ranges from a near pristine 34 items in Marsden Bay to 2320 items along the Hātea River in Whangarei.
Shelley says the mid-northern area of the country is a current blank spot in the data and Mangawhai or Te Arai would be the perfect place to set up a new monitoring team.
In the project, volunteers select a 100m by 20m area on a beach and pick up all the rubbish within it – counting, categorising and recording each item.
They then return to the exact same spot in three months’ time to count again and see how much new trash has built up.
The data is audited by Statistics New Zealand to ensure that it is scientifically rigorous.
To get started in Mangawhai and Te Arai, Litter Intelligence needs at least three people, or up to 20 people, to attend a four-hour workshop.
Shelley says that next year, Litter Intelligence is hoping to enable students to gain NCEA points by being a part of the study.
She says a meeting about the study will be held in Mangawhai before the end of the year. Those interested should look out for announcements from the Plastic Free Mangawhai Facebook Page or Mahurangi Matters.
Info: litterintelligence.org
