Noosa Litter Audit Reveals Plastic Problem

A river Clean Up and Rubbish Audit were organised as part of the annual Clean Up Australia Day (CUAD) in Noosa on Sunday 5th March 2023.

It was also a follow-up to the 2022 survey of urban land-use pressures on the lower Noosa River, targeting sites identified in the survey degraded by a combination of pressures and accumulated rubbish and weeds.

8 CUAD Registration sites were set up around Noosa Estuary with Site Coordinators and Clean Up kits for participants to join in, by boat or kayak and on foot. Over 80 members of the public signed on and collected for around 3 hours, working along each section of the Estuary foreshore land, shoreline and shallow waters.

Rubbish was picked up by hand, placed in sacks, returned to the registration points or to the NICA RiverWatch boat and tagged. Extra bulky items were recorded separately.

The tagged collections were then transferred to a central site (Tewantin Park Boat Ramp) for the Rubbish Audit and eventual disposal.

The Rubbish Audit involved measuring the volume of rubbish collected around each site, then separating and sorting the items collected in each sack into different categories of materials and counting the numbers of each type of item.

Noosa River’s rubbish is clearly an urban-river catchment problem: the great majority of rubbish items get into the river from people in Noosa’s urban centres close around the estuary, or on the shore or in boats, and not disposing of their abundant consumer items, containers and packaging materials properly. Too many of these items are easily blown or washed onto the shore or into the water via the many hard urban surfaces and cleared areas – roads, paths, open parkland and stormwater drains built along much of the foreshore.