From saving 7000 plastic bottles going to landfill to cleaning up millions of micro plastics from local beaches – the volunteers of Sustainable Waihī Beach have hit the ground running since launching six months ago.

Sustainable Waihī Beach is a fairly new community initiative that kicked off their sustainability efforts by opening seven water fountain and bottle refill stations on September 10, 2022.

'[We know] 865 million single use plastic bottles go to landfill in New Zealand a year – and if we look at the statistics for Waihī Beach alone it attributes to one million of that number,” says Sustainable Waihī Beach co-founder Pippa Coombes.

The water stations were installed along Waihī Beach to reduce the number of single use plastics going into landfill.

SWB ambassador, former Prime Minister, Helen Clarke opened the water stations.

'Helen was in attendance with other notable figures supporting us to become the most sustainable beachside town in New Zealand. To date we've saved 7000 bottles going into landfill with the usage of the water stations.”

Coast and community

The group's recent efforts have seen them leading clean ups from Waihī Beach's coastline after Cyclone Hale stirred up Bay of Plenty seas and spat out micro plastics on the beach town's sandy doorstep.

'We have undertaken an emergency beach clean, which obviously showed huge community and agency support, and we'll continue with that as our high risk, high priority area at the moment because there's still millions of nurdles (microplastics) on the beach.”

SWB's sustainability efforts aren't just making positive change for the environment – it's also making positive change for community dynamics too.

Pippa says SWB is helping to bring people together of all walks of life.

'So we get to collaborate with some amazing people and groups such as the Menz Shed, the tamariki/children at the school, and we have huge support from local hapū Te Whanau a Tauwhao.

'There are many other different groups and agencies working together…so it really is just getting everybody on board and trying to achieve a common goal.”

Predator free

The next major sustainability initiative SWB is looking towards for 2023 is achieving predator-free status from Bowentown Heads through to Albacore Ave, Waihī Beach.

This will involve running trap lines, monitoring and working with Western Bay Wildlife Trust to look at little blue penguin and other native species numbers, says Pippa.

'We'll have meaningful data coming out of this which will obviously bolster the fact that predator-free trapping and monitoring actually works and brings back the natives. We are trying to commit to the community and actually evidence this as something that needs to be done Waihī Beach-wide.”

To join Sustainable Waihī Beach, visit: https://sustainablewaihibeach.co.nz