Case Studies & Blog

It’s scary to think there are about 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic debris floating around in our oceans today. A lot of this plastic is discarded fishing waste. But as most of us have witnessed on any beach walk, you inevitably come across consumer plastics which have found their way to the beach or shore via the sea, stormwater or by people littering.

Sea Cleaners have been working hard (since 2002) to clean up New Zealand’s coastline and protect our marine life.

They partner with charities, community groups, corporates, iwi and schools to coordinate more than 160,000 volunteer hours of beach and coastal clean ups.

So far, the Sea Cleaners Trust team has removed over 11.8 million litres of waste (and counting)!

The vision of Sea Cleaners is clear. To preserve New Zealand’s Coastline for the benefit of marine life and for the enjoyment of all users. Through sponsorship, they can educate and coordinate volunteers to remove rubbish from our marine environment and educate people to dispose of their rubbish in eco-friendly ways.

As funding permits, they plan to grow the team; more vessels, crews and educators will be deployed, one harbour or stretch of coastline at a time - focusing initially on those adjacent to major population centres.

ECP has been providing Sea Cleaners with compostable bags to collect their waste. We caught up with Hayden from Sea Cleaners and asked how our partnership has helped their cause.

What's the most common item of rubbish you find?
“Single use plastics bottles, chips packets etc”.

In your opinion, what's the biggest difference people can make to reduce what gets into our water system and oceans?
“Reduce their consumption of plastic packaging & securing the waste they do discard”.

How do you use ECP's compostable products?
“For collecting the marine litter on our shorelines”

What made you choose a compostable rubbish bag option?
“We are totally focused on having a smaller environmental footprint year on year, whilst removing more marine waste so swapping to ECP bags was a step in the right direction for us”.

What is the best way to get involved or help Sea Cleaners?
“Minimising your plastic packaging consumption, picking up any rubbish you come across on your daily walk, at the beach, outside your property. Volunteer your time to spend a day with our crews or donating through our givealittle page”.

You can support Sea Cleaners through a Givealittle page here: https://givealittle.co.nz/org/seacleaners

For more info on Sea Cleaner, check out their website: https://seacleaners.com

BirdCare Aotearoa cares about birds. They have a professional and well trained team who offer a service like no other in NZ.

They care for and rehabilitate sick, injured or orphaned wild birds (both native and non native), coordinate with rescue centres, along with providing educational opportunities.

Handling birds is part of the job in caring for the sick and injured so they are able to be rehabilitated and released back into the wild. Gloves need to be used to protect the bird and handlers, and before now, plastic gloves were the only option. This just didn't sit right with BirdCare Aotearoa.

They go through many plastic gloves when handling the birds and saw this as very wasteful as the gloves were often single use.

When they found out that a compostable alternative was available, they were excited to work with Love Our Land and make the switch away from single use, traditional plastic gloves.

Love Our Land compostable gloves are made with cornstarch and are compostable, meaning that after they are used, they can essentially be turned back into earth - compost. It is a great fit to align with other companies and organisations that care about our environment and BirdCare Aotearoa is one of those special organisations.

Love Our Land director, Nigel Russell, is a bit of a "bird rescuer" himself and has a back garden full of Tui's. One of the smaller Tui's, left abandoned in the nest recently, was rescued by Nigel who cared for it until taking it to BirdCare Aotearoa.

We are excited to be able to support BirdCare Aotearoa by supplying compostable gloves to help with their endeavours. Keep up the great work!

https://birdcareaotearoa.org.nz/

---------------
"They are great, resistant, comfortable, great for food preparation, easy to wear. They are very useful for regular bird handling and regular day to day. We really like them mainly for the compostable side of things is also very important to us to reduce the waste!! So they are great!!!

Wanted to say thank you again!" Dani, BirdCare Aotearoa

Check out our little Tui below!

Check out our Kerbside bin in action!

"It is estimated that a third of the food raised or prepared globally does not make it from the paddock or packhouse to our plates. No surprise, then, that food waste is one of the biggest contributors to climate change at approximately 7% of total emissions".

A call to action on climate change; tackling the issues NZ faces with waste, organics, textiles and more.