Plastic formula lids flood shoreline in baffling invasion of Lower Hutt beach

Friday, 4 May 2018

Kaila McCreesh with more than 1000 blue plastic formula lids found washed along the shoreline in Seaview.

Hundreds of baby formula lids baffled passers-by as they washed up along the shoreline near an industrial area in Lower Hutt.

Kaila McCreesh spent two hours on Friday picking up more than a thousand of the blue lids embossed with the Goldmax brand logo along the shoreline that runs along Port Rd in Seaview.

The water outlet where many of the lids were found.

'It's shocking really. Plastic is everyone's problem. You see [it all the time] but because there was so much of it and it was all the same, I decided to get a bag and pick it up.

'I'd like to know who bloody dropped them in there so I could go and return them.'

McCreesh said the blue lids could be found up to a kilometre up the shoreline along Port Rd, Seaview.

More than 700 straws collected on Petone Beach.

* Wellington Hospitality Group to stop using plastic straws

* Wagamama Wellington leads world-wide chain in plastic straw ban

* Christchurch bars ditch single-use plastic straws**

Lorraine Shaarb with some of the straws a clean-up group picked up at Petone Beach.

There were many more lids out of her reach still floating in the harbour. She suspected they had either been dumped or washed out of a stormwater drain as many of the lids were grouped around a water outlet.

A Goldmax spokesman said they had no factory or distribution centre in Lower Hutt and had no idea how the lids came to be in the harbour.

The clean-up group found enough plastic straws to fill a potato sack

Shaarb said the amount of rubbish found at Petone Beach was 'disgusting'.

Greater Wellington Regional Council spokesman Stephen Heath said the situation was being treated as littering or dumping rather than pollution, and had contacted the Hutt City Council with regard to looking into the matter.

HCC has been approached for comment.

The mystery surrounding the blue lids comes less than a week after a beach clean-up group picked up more than 700 plastic straws from a 150-metre stretch of Petone Beach in front of the Wellington Water Ski Club.

Petone Beach Clean Up Crew co-ordinator Lorraine Shaarb said many hundreds more straws had not been put aside to be counted. They collected about a dozen rubbish bags worth of waste in 90 minutes.

She said it was disgusting and called for local hospitality providers to follow the lead of the likes of restaurant Wagamama and the Wellington Hospitality Group which in February said they planned stop using plastic straws.

'They are just unnecessary, it's not going to kill anyone if we take the straws away. They only get used once and then get thrown away, and end up in places like this.'

Niwa principal scientist in marine physics Craig Stevens said the large amount of rubbish grouped at the western end of Petone Beach indicated it was likely an 'unfortunate sweet spot'.

The straws and rubbish were likely wind-blown material which could have come from any of the populated areas around the harbour.

'[The rubbish washing up] there suggests there is a focal point where surface water collects and washes up on shore. It could be a focal point in Wellington Harbour for water circulation. That makes sense to me - being a corner it's probably an unfortunate sweet spot.'