Plastic not so fantastic on our local beaches

Sustainable Coastlines' Mitzi Borren and retired guide dog Keno with a set of false teeth found by a Whangaparaoa school student during the North Shore Coastal Clean-up. Photo / Shutter Pirates

If you're the owner of 4,203 bottles, 53 condoms or eight syringes, Sam Judd and Mitzi Borren have your lost property.

You can't have it back though - the Sustainable Coastlines crew members will ensure the trash collected from North Shore beaches is disposed of.

Borren and Judd led 900 volunteers in a major clean-up last weekend.

Now, they've audited their findings, and Borren says small changes on our part can save our beaches from turning into trash-pits.

"The relationship between street litter and the pollution of our coastlines and oceans is not a hard one to grasp. The change we need to see is not demanding - it's about everyone taking responsibility for their own waste."

The operation was Judd's 17th coastal clean-up in the last three years.

"Single-use plastic is the big enemy here," he said.

THE MAIN OFFENDERS
Over 16,000 litres of rubbish was removed from the beaches and waterways on Auckland's North Shore by the Sustainable Coastlines coastal clean-up last weekend.

The coastal clean-ups are designed not only to remove rubbish from the beaches but to generate educational resources.

In total over 42,000 individual pieces were collected. These were then counted, categorised, weighed and measured during the standardised audit process which enlists the help of community workers.

While there were a number of interesting items found such as an entire briefcase and contents, an old artillery shell, a time capsule, and half a set of false teeth,single-use plastics were the most common find.

The main offenders were:

* 7,572 food wrappers and containers

* 5,886 pieces of polystyrene and foam

* 4,916 plastic caps and lids from drink bottles

* 3,941 plastic bags

* 2,603 plastic drink bottles

* 2,439 aluminium cans

* 1,295 pieces of plastic of unknown origin

* 1,146 plastic drinking straws

* 994 'Mermaid's tears' - plastic resin pallets from the manufacturing industry

* 695 gardening related items such as planter bags and pots