Tackling litter this Rugby Season

Tangaroa Blue is working with Queensland Country Bank Stadium on a Litter Hero source reduction plan (SRP) as part of our ReefClean program and will be attending all Rugby League games for this season to help reduce litter at these events.

The focus of this SRP is on Containers for Change,  encouraging the public to recycle their cans and bottles in designated blue bins instead of having them end up in the general waste bins/landfill.

With many games left for this footy season, we welcome any volunteers who are interested in helping out at future games.
Please email tia@tangaroablue.org for more information or to put your name down.

ReefClean is funded by the Australian Government’s Reef Trust and is delivered by Tangaroa Blue Foundation.

The Dangers of Playground Rubber Surfaces

The momentum is building with another council agreeing with our rubber crumb assessment report that recycling tyres into soft fall rubber crumb is not fit-for-purpose for children’s play areas.

ABC News has written a great article talking about these dangers.
You can read the full article here

This comes on the back of the release of the Tangaroa Blue Rubber Impact Report 2021 and the ReefClean AUSMAP Rubber Crumb Loss Report 2021 which highlighted the extent of rubber crumb loss at parks along the Great Barrier Reef.

Ocean Plastic Products – Credible or greenwashing? Watch the Q&A Panel Discussion

Over the last few years, a variety of products claiming to be made of “ocean plastic” or “ocean bound plastic” or “potential ocean bound plastic” have started to appear on supermarket shelves and online stores.

The messaging appears to claim that we’ve solved the plastic marine pollution issue, including what to do with plastics recovered from our oceans. But misleading labelling on some products and marketing campaigns is causing consumer confusion.

This Q&A panel discussion unpacks the myths, truths and possibilities for recycling plastics recovered from our oceans with experts from the Environmental Defenders Office, the plastics industry and the NGO sector.

Our panel:

Heidi Tait – CEO, Tangaroa Blue Foundation
Kirsty Ruddock – Managing Lawyer, Safe Climate – Environmental Defenders Office
Brett Tait – Project Manager, Operation Clean Sweep
Royston Kent – CEO – BC Plastics
Warwick Hall – Vice President – Australasian Bioplastics Association Inc

You can watch the entire discussion below and hear from industry experts on the topic.

 

Ocean Plastic Products – are they credible or just greenwashing?

Tangaroa Blue as an organisation has been receiving lots of enquiries as to the credibility of products claiming to be made from ocean plastic.

Today, with help from the Environmental Defenders Office, we have submitted a complaint about misleading ocean plastic labelling to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).

To assist consumers and AMDI partner organisations in reviewing their own understanding of this issue, we are holding a Q&A panel session with experts from the plastic industry, the Environmental Defenders Office and the NGO on Tuesday 20th December, 11:30am-12:30pm.

During this session, we will also provide a resource to guide you through creating your ACCC submission.

There are limited spots available, click here to register

Busting Ghost Nets Haunting the Great Barrier Reef

World first program that uses retrieved and repurposed satellite technology to track and remove deadly and destructive ghost nets

With giant ghost nets wreaking havoc on marine life and corals around the Great Barrier Reef, marine debris charity Tangaroa Blue Foundation has taken to the sky by partnering with international technology company Satlink to launch a world first program which uses satellite technology to tag and track ghost nets while retrieval teams are mobilised to remove them.

Satlink’s “Project ReCon” will allow for repurposing recovered echosounder buoys to track ghost nets entering the Great Barrier Reef and will be integrated into Tangaroa Blue Foundation’s ReefClean project that is funded by the Australian Government’s Reef Trust.

“With our teams looking for ways to reuse and recycle international commercial fishing echosounder buoys retrieved from beach clean-ups along the Reef, it was very much a case of who ya gonna call,” says Heidi Tait, CEO of Tangaroa Blue Foundation.

“Turns out, Satlink was the ghost net buster we needed to speak with to be
able to repurpose the buoys and divert them from landfill.”

It was a perfect match, Tangaroa Blue was the perfect partner to get Project ReCon off the ground, starting in Australia along the Great Barrier Reef early next year and then rolled out around Australia through the Australian Marine Debris Initiative (AMDI) network.

“By working with international commercial fishing fleet partners we can have the buoys recovered by Tangaroa Blue and their AMDI partners tested and reassigned to track ghost nets along the Reef. The technology also allows for virtual fences to be put around reefs providing notifications before nets impact critically sensitive areas,” Kathryn Gavira, Satlink’s Head of Science & Sustainability, says.

The project has been welcomed by the Special Envoy for the Great Barrier Reef and Labor Senator for Queensland, Senator Green: “This exciting new project by the Tangaroa Blue Foundation is a further step in the right direction to one day ensuring our waters are free from ghost nets. Well done to everyone involved.”

“Ghost nets pose a huge problem in the world’s oceans including Australia’s northern oceans and the Great Barrier Reef, where sadly we see tonnes of fish, dugongs, turtles and other marine species getting tangled up, and coral being put at risk,” says Senator Green.

As part of the program, Tangaroa Blue’s AMDI partners, which include Indigenous Rangers, tourism operators and commercial vessels, will deploy the buoys as part of their monitoring work.

“With lost or discarded ghost nets the size of football fields currently drifting unsupervised across the Great Barrier Reef, they are causing untold damage to marine life and fragile corals as they become entangled on reefs”, Tait says.

“By having the buoys distributed along the Great Barrier Reef with AMDI partners it means that if a ghost net can’t be removed due to its size and capacity of the vessel and crew who find them, a buoy can be immediately attached and the net’s movement tracked in real time by satellite until a retrieval team is mobilised.”

Implementing Project ReCon along the Reef will help reduce technological waste, reduce impacts on coastal environments and benefit the local Australian communities that find the echosounder buoys.

Photo credit: Chris Bolton Fishing

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