Call for litter traps to be compulsory for new developments
Charity wants property developers forced to install litter traps on drains as part of consent process.
Property developers should be required to install stormwater litter traps as a condition of resource consent, a report to the Albert-Eden Local Board recommends, pointing to major projects such as the former Unitec site in Mt Albert.
The proposal comes out of a year-long monitoring programme run by the charity Sustainable Coastlines, which audited drains at five schools in Point Chevalier, Mt Albert and Westmere and matched the results against litter collected along the local coast.
Food wrappers were the most common item in the school drains, 31 percent of everything found, and reappeared on the beach, tracing a direct pathway from street and playground to the sea. Plastic made up roughly two-thirds of drain litter and three-quarters of what washes ashore.
Tying traps to consent, the report argues, would generate ongoing monitoring data and stop plastic entering the marine environment at source, rather than paying to clean it off beaches afterwards.
