Thousands of items of rubbish wash up on one of Perth's most popular beach

Thousands of items of rubbish from all around the city, much of it old plastic, have washed up one of Perth's most popular beaches.

Transcript

00:00 This is litter collected at Bathers Beach since February, and because it's located near

00:06 the mouth of the Swan River, it's come from people all over Perth.

00:09 The storms always are going to wash in more litter, and wash in litter that has come from

00:16 afar.

00:17 Like some of this stuff may have originated from near Fremantle, but a lot of it would

00:22 have travelled fair distances.

00:24 A lot of the rubbish has gone into drains and travelled along the river into the ocean.

00:29 Some of it's from vessels, and some of it dates back decades.

00:32 This black bottom, that looks like the black bottom of a Coke bottle.

00:37 We haven't had these.

00:39 These were popular in the 80s and 90s, but they got phased out in the 1990s.

00:45 And this one has obviously been in the ocean for a fair while.

00:48 You can see the fouling.

00:50 Sharp-eyed collectors also found plastic fragments known as nurdles, particularly dangerous to

00:55 marine life.

00:56 Dr Davies has been monitoring litter levels to determine whether bans on plastics are

01:00 making any difference.

01:01 Volunteers collect the rubbish and put it into a special seahorse bin.

01:05 I think the exciting part of being part of this project is knowing that it's actually

01:10 all being analysed, and in a little small way helping out to help find out what policies

01:16 are making a difference, where some of this plastic's coming from, and then being able

01:21 to work out more what we can all do about it.

01:23 The key to cleaning up the beach is to look for things that are out of the ordinary, like

01:27 this piece of plastic that looks like it's from a balloon release.

01:32 Regular visitor, artist Neil Kidd, says he's always picking up litter.

01:36 I keep getting told by my people who see me daily that it's looking really great, but

01:42 you really don't know what the storms are going to bring up next week, and you might

01:46 see the whole place covered in rubbish again.

01:48 Mr Kidd hopes the program could be expanded to other beaches across Perth.

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