By Cassandra Pulver

Tangaroa Blue Foundation focuses on the health of our marine environment by reducing the impacts of marine debris in local ecosystems.

This on-ground network of volunteers, communities, organizations and agencies around the country monitors the impacts of marine debris along their stretch of coastline heading into some of the many remote beach clean up events that take place each dry season.

The recent mega clean up at Chilli Beach Cape York collected 94,400 individual items so many of which were some type of plastic breaking up into smaller pieces of plastic.

To put this into perspective, the mega clean up filled over 360 clean-up bags. The individual items of debris removed included  337 cigarette lighters, 2015 plastic drink bottles, 1101 plastic bleach bottles, 15281 plastic lids and bottle tops, 2949 pieces of broken polystyrene packaging, 2305 thongs and 1553m of rope. But the statistic that is the most horrifying and shocking is the 48675 pieces of broken up hard plastic that are remnants of bottles, containers, buckets and other plastic products that really shows the legacy of what happens to plastic when it is released into the environment.

As usual the organisation meticulously logged every piece of rubbish for entry into the Australian Marine Debris Database, which will help scientists understand and combat marine pollution around the country.

Heidi Taylor Managing Director from Tangaroa Blue Foundation said “we are working with international partners to try and find unique ways of recycling beach plastic, which is still in the pipeline, but this will help us divert the plastic collected during beach clean-ups from landfill, especially in remote areas with no or little waste management infrastructure.”

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The next clean up is at Yule Point (13km south of Port Douglas) on August 5th from 9am – 12pm. Volunteers are still needed, to get more information people should visit www.tangaroablue.org and check out the event calendar on the homepage or visit their Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/tangaroa.blue