Happy Birthday to Surfrider. The first meeting of Surfrider activists was 30 years ago at Currumbin Beach on the Gold Coast and soon branches started popping up all around Australia and our South Coast branch represented strongly. Back then, volunteers were busy with the ‘poo’ marches to protest about raw sewage on beaches. We have come a long way since then and have had many amazing volunteers help out with extraordinary efforts for all of our ocean victories! Thank you to all those legends who paved the way for us. 

Drain Buddies stop garbage en route to sea 

Last month I mentioned that we were successful in obtaining 12 ‘Ocean Friendly’ Drain Buddies that were installed in drain pits around locations surrounding Wollongong Harbour. The funding to buy the Drain Buddies was the result of a $20,000 Government Grant that the South Coast branch was awarded. Our aim was to collaborate with Wollongong City Council to trial Drain Buddies in our region and then provide our captured data to the Australian Marine Debris Initiative. 

These 12 Drain Buddies have prevented a huge amount of garbage from entering our harbour. The premise is simple: when it rains or even when it is very windy, loose bits of plastic and garbage end up on the side of the road. More often than not with a normal drain, the garbage goes straight down the drain and is carried into our waterways and makes its way to the beach. However, an ‘Ocean Friendly’ Drain Buddy captures debris in its ‘basket’. The rain can still sieve through the drain, but rubbish, cigarette butts and even microplastics are trapped. Microplastics are any small bits of plastic that are less than 5 millimetres in length and can be derived from broken up bits of plastic, cosmetic scrubs and even clothing. Drain Buddies are doing a great job of preventing nasty plastics and pollutants from entering our beautiful Wollongong Harbour. 

Stop single-use stuff

This isn’t about hating plastics, after all I have a phone and drive a car and it would be hypocritical of me to condemn all plastics. But unnecessary, single-use, non-recycled and littered plastics bother me. Plastic is an amazing and versatile material that lasts forever and therein lies the problem. Plastic never really goes away – it breaks ‘up’ into tiny pieces, too small to pick up. Even as the tiny plastic particles sink to the sea floor, they continue to wreak havoc, attracting other floating chemicals to become tiny toxic parcels. Marine life ingests this plastic, mistaking it for food, so anything we can do to prevent plastic from entering the ocean is a bonus. We have to stop plastics before they hit the beach or waterways because once they are there – it is too late. We can do beach cleans forever, but we can also be clever and come up with solutions that prevent rubbish from getting there in the first place.

Please join us and get involved. You can help us to get more of these great initiatives happening in our area. Sign up to get involved at susie@surfrider.org.au