Avon Ōtakaro Network – No more plastic geese, thanks!
A small plastic goose sits on the railing of a series of wooden bins into which Avon Ōtakaro Network manager Hayley Guglietta sorts detritus that’s been scooped up from one of our city’s iconic awa (rivers).
The plastic toy will become a quirky souvenir of the network’s In River Clean Up project, which has rescued 12 tonnes’ worth of rubbish from the Õtakaro Avon River during the past two years.
“I keep random things,” says Hayley about the goose, which will be weighed and recorded alongside various categories of retrieved rubbish. It will then join an assortment of oddities that have similarly been evicted from Christchurch’s waterways.
Hayley estimates that half of the junk fished out of the river (including the odd plastic collectible) is able to be diverted from landfill, which benefits the city both financially and environmentally.
Improving the quality of the city’s waterways and increasing biodiversity are the project’s ultimate goals.
“We want to get the project to a point where we’ve cleaned the river,” says Hayley. “We want to get to a point where we can go to the city council and ECan and say, hey, it’s now up to you to continue [the work].”
The project uses a citizen-science methodology to record litter data: predominantly what types of inorganic material are entering the river and the locations where rubbish is found. Hayley hopes that this information will assist the councils and other agencies in targeting prevention and remedial efforts, such as determining the placement of litter traps (booms) at strategic places along the river.
Hayley uses a set of scales attached to an outdoor (rusting) metal frame for weighing the various categories of rubbish. Sorted bucketfuls of the usual ‘suspects’ – aluminium cans, and glass and plastic bottles – are weighed in this manner before being cleaned and placed in recycling bins.
Larger items such as tyres and metal objects are delivered to the city’s eco-depots or on-sold to scrap yards. Pushbikes (it’s unbelievable how many bikes at various stages of functionality are sitting in a pile) can occasionally be made workable but, for the most part, join the scrap metal pile.
“I don’t weigh the big things like bikes and cones anymore, as I use an average weight for them when I transfer the data to the spreadsheet,” says Hayley. “I count the bikes and, unless I can get them refurbished, they go into the metal bin. When the bin’s full I take it to a metal recycler and get money for it.”.
Currently four key groups contribute their clean-up efforts to the project. Non-profit organisations River Conservation New Zealand and Healthy Rivers New Zealand (both one-person operations) are regular ‘donors’ to the junk piles, which incrementally grow – then diminish – at the collection site of Riverlution hub in Richmond. Hayley spends an average of an hour a week photographing, collating, sorting and analysing what is dropped off.
With current funding constraints, the project is concentrating efforts on the Õtakaro Avon River but Hayley hopes to expand the project to include the Ōpāwaho Heathcote River.
The In River Clean Up project is one of many coordinated by the Avon Ōtākaro Network. The network was founded in June 2011 by individuals and community groups with a shared vision for enhancing Christchurch’s rivers and surroundings. Hayley is a founding member of the network and a 2023 recipient of a Christchurch City Council Civic Award.
(November 2024)
Photos (L to R):
The plastic goose fished up from the river.
Hayley Guglietta sorting waste that’s been collected from the river.
Hayley weighing buckets of sorted rubbish.
Daryl of Healthy Rivers NZ in action on the Ōtakaro Avon River.
