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Mangawhai Beach School, Kaipara District Council and Northland Regional Council (NRC) are taking part in a new multi-agency effort to trap litter and find out exactly what plastic and other rubbish is getting into local rivers, estuaries and the ocean.
Four LittaTraps – simple net devices that fit inside stormwater grates – have been installed in the Mangawhai area, in the car park at Mangawhai Beach School, at the Mangawhai Village shops in Moir Street, on the way to the surf beach at Wintle Street and on a residential road at Pearson Street.
NRC’s coastal resource scientist, Richard Griffiths, said 110 items were captured during the first three months of the project during the summer. Most items were captured at the village shops – 91 items – with seven items found at both the school and the surf beach and five items at Pearson Street.
“The most frequent items in these four traps were cigarette butts/filters (49 items), followed by fragments of soft plastic (24 items),” he said. “Overall, plastic items accounted for 91 of all the items captured, or 83 per cent.”
Mr Griffith said there were 50 traps in total installed across Northland and they would be checked every three months to see if there were seasonal patterns in the quantity of litter and the type of litter being dumped.
Dr Manue Martinez from NorthTec would audit the traps’ contents and would try to estimate how much plastic was finding its way into the sea.
