Taonga found among 2.5 tonnes of rubbish picked up from coastlines

Tuesday, 16 December 2025

More than 2.5 tonnes of it was rubbish but a few grams at least were taonga.

Gemma England from Conservation Volunteers NZ and Sam Judd from Sustainable Coastlines organised a team of 256 volunteers on Saturday to clean up the coastline of Hutt City, from Pencarrow to Petone Beach to a Wainuiomata river to the Hutt riverbank car park and Matiu/Somes Island.

All up 2655.75kg of rubbish was gathered.

But amongall the rubbish ‒ which included a lot of plastic, a broken outrigger canoe and scooters ‒ was a pounamu necklace found by a volunteer at Pencarrow. It had since been blessed by a Te Āti Awa volunteer there on the day and Judd said he was now keen to know of its background ‒ and potential owner.

The pounamu (greenstone) was about two-thirds the size of a human palm.

Sarah Hight from Conservation Volunteers said 720kg of rubbish was collected from Wainuiomata alone.

“These figures really highlight the scale of the problem and show how important clean-up events like this are for engaging our community in positive, hands-on environmental action,” she said.

“When plastic enters the ocean, it gets into the food chain and poisons people,” said Judd, who had organised many similar events around the country.