I bought a breadmaker after picking up 40 years of bread bags at Fox River

Friday, 19 July 2019

OPINION: I will never ever use those little individual butter, jam or milk containers from hotels again. 

After spending only one day picking up rubbish in Fox River, I am vowing to make small changes to my habits and my household to reduce the amount of plastic I am sending to landfill. 

I joined 64 volunteers in the Fox River near Fox Glacier this week. And it was an eye-opener. 

The closed landfill was established in the 1960s and closed in the early 2000s. It burst open in a large flood in March and four months later volunteers are only scratching the surface to pick up what has been strewn along the 1200 hectares of riverbed and 64km of coastline. 

**READ MORE:

* Asbestos needles found among Fox River waste as efforts ramp up

* 81 year old volunteers for Fox River rubbish cleanup

* Urgent plea for more Government funding for West Coast rubbish clean-up

* New Zealand's piles of historic rubbish-with a sea view

* West Coast waste will end up in deep sea canyon, scientist warns

* Scale of beach clean-up after West Coast rubbish dump burst 'big, nasty'**

It could be soul-destroying work, when you bounce down the riverbed in an NZDF pinzgauer all-terrain vehicle and look out at the piles of river debris covered in soft plastic, it looks insurmountable. Plastic bags are tangled up in branches and the bodies of old cars buried in silt. There are layers and layers of rubbish buried in the river rubble that will take years to wash out. As I look out at the landscape that resembles a war zone, I wonder how Minister for Conservation Eugenie Sage could publicly say it is not a disaster on the scale of the Rena. 

I crouched over logjams, unpicking the tangled mess into seed sacks, picking up minute bits of soft plastic thinking they are the bits that sea life could eat it if it is washed out to sea. DOC will monitor any dead animals found in the river or beaches to determine if they have died from plastic ingestion.

I came across nappies, old school drink cans, an old M&M wrapper that looked brand new even though it was probably from the '80s. Whoever ate them probably thought the packet would never be seen again when they put it into the rubbish bin. I came across so many bread bags that on my return home I bought a bread maker. 

What seems like millions of individual butter and milk containers from the Fox and Franz hotels litter the riverbed. The sack gets heavy at only a quarter full because everything is covered in wet sand. It takes too long to untangle some of the plastic so I end up just throwing some of the branches into the sack too. I drag the sack over to a large wool sack that the NZDF vehicle carries away when full. 

If you were doing the work on your own, you would probably just sit down and cry. But the positive atmosphere and sense of achievement among the volunteers is heart-warming. Some of the volunteers have been out there for weeks. The work is hard, but no one is complaining. As one teacher who gave up her school holidays to help out said 'Coming here is the best green prescription'.

It's about helping, being amongst a sense of comraderie, making a difference, fresh air (luckily the rubbish doesn't stink) all with a beautiful West Coast backdrop. 

Volunteers – up to 90 a day – have from all over the country. School principal Mina Pomare-Pietahas and a group of her students have driven for two days from the Far North's Panguru Area School while Sue Haupapa has come from Owhango with her 12-year-old grandson Cody Haupapa from Taumarunui, some 1000km away. 

The rain was falling gently in the morning, but with wet weather gear everyone gets stuck in. When the sun comes out in the afternoon, a double rainbow framed an amazing view of Fox Glacier. Lunch and morning tea was tasty and people chatted over their hot drinks. 

Everyone is talking to each other, they are people from all walks of life. People are even happy to talk to a reporter; to get the message out and to encourage more volunteers to come down and see for themselves. Everyone had some ideas of how to solve the world's environmental problems. 

All the volunteers, like myself, have a new sense of determination to reduce the amount of plastic in our lives. 

We talk about how there could be an environmental levy put on manufacturers, supermarkets, producers, or consumers to be used for research into cleaning up landfills and alternatives to plastic. It could be put into a Ministry for the Environment fund to remove historic landfills from coastal areas and rivers.  I don't know if the waste to energy plant proposed for Hokitika is the answer but we need to do something about the estimated 100 landfills around the country that are at risk from erosion near rivers or beaches. We don't want Fox River to happen again, and if it does we need to be ready. It took too long for the Government and council to act. 

The experience has prompted me to promise to buy more from bulk bin stores, save some bread bags by baking my own bread, do more baking for my children, instead of buying them individually-wrapped treats. I cringe when I think of the number of disposable nappies I have used for two children, the individual jelly and yoghurt cartons they love and the outrageous pile of plastic left when they unwrap new toys. I dread to think that my grandchildren will have to pick up my rubbish if the Greymouth landfill burst into the Grey River in the future. Rivers are dynamic and cannot be tamed, just like the sea when climate change really hits. 

Plastic doesn't go away, hundreds of volunteers are needed to pick up the Fox River rubbish, but it will just be put into another hole in the ground somewhere else. It's time to make small but significant changes. 

People can sign up to help with the clean up at www.doc.govt.nz/operation-tidy-fox-volunteer