Auckland, your rubbish

We love our beautiful beaches, our gorgeous Gulf islands. So why are we turning them into garbage dumps? John Landrigan and chief photographer Kellie Blizard went to Great Barrier Island to see for themselves.
A plastic bottletop dropped at the top of the Waitakere Ranges floats down through Oratia Stream into Henderson Creek and then Waitemata Harbour.
If it's raining hard and the bottletop catches the high tides, it might be whipped out to Rangitoto Island within two hours.
If a southeasterly is blowing, it could reach Great Barrier Island's idyllic beaches inside a week.
This journey is the story of a piece of discarded rubbish hitting the perfect - or, as the case is - imperfect storm so it can contaminate the furthest reaches of our Gulf.
The bottletop will bob and weave through plastic toys, packaging, straws and bottles dropped on our footpaths and blown into our drains months or even years before. It could be caught in the plastic bait-bag blown from beside a fisherman's feet just minutes earlier.
Not all rubbish collects on the beaches of our harbour and islands. In a few years that bottletop could be disintegrating in the sunlight further out to sea. Broken down by saltwater and sea air, it would release poisons into the oceans and resemble a small pellet or toxic snack for an unsuspecting fish, dolphin or whale.
Emily Penn picks up The Aucklander team from the grass landing strip at Great Barrier's remote Claris airport after our hour-long flight from Auckland.
The volunteer is wearing a Sustainable Coastlines T-shirt, an infectious grin and - like all the people we meet who are involved in cleaning up our harbour - reveals a riveting autobiography.
Ms Penn has long been conscious of her surroundings. Cardiff-born, she studied sustainable living and design in architecture to learn how to do something about protecting them. She has donated time to the Kiwi-led Earth Race team to help promote sustainable fuel, and spent five months cleaning Tonga's coast.
Her next task is to take on the floating garbage patch of suspended plastic, chemical sludge and other debris trapped in the currents of the North Pacific Gyre.
She is also the unpaid operations manager of the Sustainable Coastlines Trust, a Kiwi charity rallying more than 650 volunteers and a flotilla of boats and kayaks to clean up one of Auckland's tips - the west coast of Great Barrier Island.
"The main beaches are clean, where locals pick up the rubbish, but not down the west coast, where it's hard to get to by foot," she says.
With help from the Sir Peter Blake Trust, Fullers Ferries, Ports of
Auckland and local businesses, 400 children from low-decile Auckland schools will visit tomorrow to enjoy a day on the island - while cleaning it.
It's the second event the trust has organised on the island. Last April, kids and volunteers hauled out more than 2.7 tonnes of debris in just one day.
into a company cleaning up the gulfACROSS the Gulf, past
Waiheke and the eastern beaches, on the mangroved shores of the upper reaches of Tamaki River, lies Wymondley Rd Primary School. Principal Tone Kolose went to last year's clean-up and was thrilled by the impact his students made.
"Some of these kids never get out of the area they live in. The opportunity to go to Great Barrier for the clean-up was fantastic. It helped them take ownership and responsibility for the environment, to see the impact of not putting rubbish in the bin," he says.
From that experience it is easier to tell students to keep their school clean. He is looking at ways to involve the school in cleaning up the harbours.
Charity co-founder and event director Sam Judd says this is what the trust set out to achieve.
Judd, who qualified as a lawyer, readily discards legal jargon for surfer lingo as we head to the beaches in a small boat: everything is "epic, buzzing, gnarley, chur bro".
Surfers becoming guardians of their sandy surroundings is nothing new. Board riders rely on the tides, prevailing winds and the passage of the moon. If not camping on beaches, they're in the ocean and unlikely to appreciate waves littered with crap. "I'm a qualified lawyer, bro, who picks up rubbish off the beach."
It is no easy task coordinating 400 primary schoolchildren to comb hundreds of little beaches on the scarcely populated island for rubbish. Over the weekend, Judd will work with 250 volunteers who will clean coasts that are hard to reach by land.
Somehow, this eco-friendly surfer has also sourced 15 boats and 65 kayaks to make it happen.
In 2009, the trust also coordinated communities in Gisborne and Mahia Peninsula and is always looking for money for other projects. "It's a peer-learning opportunity, bro. We build pride into schoolkids so they can go home and say, 'Hey mum, what are you doing with that rubbish?' It's powerful stuff."
Judd is 27 but looking at his weathered features, you might think him older. Shirtless, he sits casually at the stern of the boat. A scar under his shoulder may or may not have come from a shark attack.
Judd has surfed and dived around the world and seen "unbelievable pollution" around Mexico, Chile, and Peru's coast and while "buzzing out" with survivors from ages past in the Galapagos Islands. When recording details of the wildlife of this rocky outcrop, Charles Darwin failed to report on the "pumping surf".
Between waves, Judd volunteered for eight days with local fishermen picking up coastal rubbish. "I saw these endemic animals, dead in trash where no one lives. We found packages from thousands of miles away in America. It was then I realised this stuff was travelling across the ocean."
In far-off Galapagos he and two other Kiwi surfers formed the Sustainable Coastlines Trust. "It opened our eyes to the problem. This is a major environmental blowout on a massive scale. That's marine debris travelling across the ocean."
Hitchhiking - well, hitch-sailing - back to New Zealand he "dropped in" on Tonga and noticed garbage gathering there too. With Emily Penn and the team, he returned last year and convinced 3000 of Foa and Lifuka islands' 4500 residents to collect more than 120 truckloads of rubbish. They managed to divert a New Zealand freighter to haul eight containers from the low-lying islands.
"That blew everyone's expectation out of the water," says Judd. "It was nuts. The event positively changed the attitudes of the locals."

The day is stunning and the water off Great Barrier is clear. Until we near the beaches: among the seaweed and herons, we see scraps of trash. In two minutes Judd fills a bin with single-use plastics such as straws, bottletops, bottles and packaging; plus polystyrene, an onion sack, rusty cans, empty household cleaner containers, children's toys, a shoe.
"This is an epic place that needs to be looked after. There's a lot of conservation work done here and we still picked up 2.7 tonnes of rubbish in one day from these same beaches."
Judd and Penn are eco-warriors who attract other concerned pals. Hayden Smith finds black plastic bottoms from old soft drink bottles that have long been out of circulation yet still bob about in our inlets. Some of the oddest things he's dredged out of the water are a jar of mercury in Henderson Creek and a deflated blow-up-doll off the Viaduct.
Smith tried carpentry and working in transport before following his wife's career advice to join a two-man team as sea captain patrolling 600km of our coastline.
"She said to think back to when I was a child and remember how I played. Convert playtime to your job and you'll never work a day in your life. I had always played in streams and the bush," he tells us.
Kayaking in the harbour, he noticed quantities of rubbish like our bottletop. It made him realise his work/play balance could help the environment. For two years he campaigned with Waitakere Mayor Bob Harvey for a coordinated mop-up of our shores.
It sounds like such an obvious thing - people are employed to clean our streets - but garbage collection has not been done, officially, in our harbours.
In 2002, the Waitemata Harbour Clean-Up Trust was established to remove litter from Auckland's harbour and inner gulf islands, and to promote the concept of clean, clear, rubbish-free waterways.
Council support and corporate sponsorship raised money to commission Hayden's Harbour Clean company to raise awareness of litter and remove trash from the inner gulf.
The Ports of Auckland provided a 6.5m boat, named after former regional council chairperson, the late Phil Warren. It's dredged more than two million litres of rubbish out of the Gulf and Waitemata Harbour.
Smith greets us at the Phil Warren, moored at the pier in Whangapoua Estuary ("the best right-hand surf bar in NZ") in shorts and not much else. He's here to support Sustainable Coastlines and we're on the boat to check beaches that will be cleaned over the weekend.
"Awareness is starting to grow. The worst areas are at the top of the tributaries, Henderson Creek, the Whau and Tamaki rivers and gulf islands."
Rubbish comes not only from lazy people chucking it on the ground. Cats and dogs tear at rubbish bags, the wind catches loose trash and - I'm ashamed to report - careless journalists lose their sunglasses on the very beaches to be cleaned.
Back at Wymondley school, Leonardo Wright can't wait for tomorrow: he went on last year's trip and says he'll be able to pick up more rubbish this year because he's a bit older.
The clean-up was the 10-year-old's first trip to the islands and his first ferry ride. "It was an honour and privilege to clean up the beaches and parks.
I was exhausted and tired, but happy to keep New Zealand beautiful. I will be trying my hardest to get more sacks this year."
Not only does Leonardo make sure rubbish goes in the bin these days, he also tells his mates to keep the playground clean. Sage advice.
Coast is clear
Since 2002 Waitemata Harbour Clean-Up Trust has collected 2,031,064 litres of garbage in 12,758.9 hours of work. This equals 8462.77 full 240-litre wheeliebins.
The trust coordinated more than 5000 volunteers who worked over 26,592.5 hours and picked up 410,250 litres of rubbish.
If you want to help on Saturday, see www.sustainablecoastlines.org to book a subsidised ferry ticket and for more information.
There is, of course, a party at Claris sportsground after Saturday's clean-up - but Sam Judd prefers to call it a "celebration" of the good works done.