Kate Hall: Stopping litter in New Zealand's oceans

Our oceans are filled with a variety of things: sea creatures, plants, algae, coral, rubbish. Some things belong there, and some don’t. 

Since ‘Litter Intelligence’ began back in 2018, citizen scientists have picked up, counted, and weighed over 621,000 individual pieces of litter from coastal survey areas across Aotearoa, more than 75% of which is plastic.  

Sustainable Coastlines has launched their ‘Trash Species of Aotearoa New Zealand’ campaign, and Kate ‘Ethically Kate’ Hall joined Jack Tame to discuss the most common species, and chat about the ways we can keep them from filling our oceans. 

Key Litter Species facts: 

• Scollipop (lollipop sticks): 8,301 sticks recorded in Litter Intelligence coastal litter surveys. Lots near kids' playgrounds!  
• Gutterfish is part of the construction waste family, which makes up more than 20% of the litter removed from Litter Intelligence coastal survey sites, by weight.  
• Blue snackeral is from the food wrappers family, which Litter Intelligence data tells us has been collected a colossal 39,013 times.  
• Pauarade features a plastic bottle top, one of the most common items collected in surveys we find an average of 18 for every 1,000m2 of coastline.  
• Smoki (cigarette butts and filters) are the 8th most common trash species found in Litter Intelligence beach surveys, with the data reporting over 18,890 collected to date. 

For more information visit the Sustainable Coastlines site here. 

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