Out for a country walk two Whanganui girls took the time to fish three bags of plastic rubbish out of the Kai Iwi Stream.
Ana Pearce's mother, Tina Chambers, was outraged at what they found in "our so called clean green country side". She was proud of the girls for doing something about it.
"Our road sides are also a disgrace and sooooo embarrassing! 'Clean green New Zealand' is becoming a fading few words which are now hard to roll out off the tongue," she said.
The girls' haul was mainly plastic drink bottles, with at least one agricultural chemical container. They are now planning a talk at school on their rubbish exploit.
They may want to form a group and register with Keep New Zealand Beautiful (www.knzb.org.nz) to remove more rubbish during the organisation's clean up week, September 12-18.
Keep New Zealand Beautiful offers help for groups clearing roadsides, riversides, streamsides and beaches.
Also on the rural rubbish front, Plasback is celebrating the 10th anniversary of its on-farm recycling scheme. It gathered and recycled nearly 100 tonnes more plastic this season than last - the plastic was mostly silage wrap.
Manager Chris Hartshorne said every tonne of agricultural plastic recycled prevented 1273kg of climate-changing carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere.
In its 10 years Plasback has saved the emission of 9250 tonnes of CO2, the amount sequestered by 1.27 million trees, he said.