How to Beat Plastic Pollution for World Environment Day 2025

World Environment Day 2025 calls for collective action to tackle plastic pollution. But what do we know about how plastics are affecting wetlands and estuaries? And what can we do at Hunter Wetlands Centre and at home to protect these important and fragile ecosystems?

Plastic loads to the environment

Many friends of the wetlands of the Hunter estuary will have contributed to Clean Up Australia Day in early March.

The statistics on waste collected from our environment during this year’s Clean Up are now available, and they highlight the pervasive impact of plastics – on land, in waterways, wetlands and the ocean.

Across Australia this year, more than 800,000 people volunteered on Clean Up Australia Day, at just on 8300 clean up sites. Of the five most common types of litter collected, three were plastic – plastic bags, plastic drink bottles (and lids), and other soft plastics.

In their analysis of litter in the environment, NSW EPA found that beverage container lids alone are the third most littered item in urban estuaries, with plastic bottle lids accounting for 7% of littered items! Overall, 79% of littered items in the urban estuaries of NSW are plastic!

Australia is a small sample of the global impact of plastic waste. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) which has conducted World Environment Day since 1973, reports that ‘the world produces more than 430 million tonnes of plastic annually, two-thirds of which are short-lived products that soon become waste, filling the ocean and, often, working their way into the human food chain’.

UNEP says that plastic pollution permeates every corner of the planet – even in our bodies in the form of microplastics.

The Pew Charitable Trusts (PCT 2020), in conjunction with SYSTEMIQ and a panel of international experts, prepared a report on research and modelling: ‘Breaking the Plastic Wave: A Comprehensive Assessment of Pathways Towards Stopping Plastic Ocean Pollution’.

Without urgent intervention at government, business, and community levels the flow of plastic into the ocean is projected to nearly triple by 2040. Without considerable action to address plastic pollution, 50 kg of plastic will enter the ocean for every metre of shoreline. (PCT 2020)

NSW Government 2023 reiterates this huge and accumulating load: ‘By 2050 there may be more plastic than fish by weight in the world’s oceans.’

PCT 2020 also found that ‘a future with approximately 80 per cent less annual plastic leakage into the ocean relative to Business-as-Usual is achievable by 2040 using existing technologies’ – i.e. we have the means to reduce plastic pollution of our marine water, but so far, lack the collaborative will and commitment to make a change.

How does plastic get into coastal wetlands like the Hunter Wetlands Centre?

Coastal wetlands are at the interface of freshwater and marine systems. They receive runoff from urban stormwater. They receive waste that floats in from the sea, with waves, tides, and currents. They receive light weight waste - like plastics, blown from nearby parks and suburbs. And they receive plastics that are directly disposed by recreational users – including people walking or fishing from the bank or a boat. So, any plastic let loose in the environment can end up in a wetland. Plastic is very resistant to breakdown in the environment. It lasts a long time (NSW Government estimates 20 to 500 years). But as it moves around in the environment, plastic can fragment into tiny pieces, known as microplastics.

What happens when plastic gets into wetlands?

Plastic fragments, and especially microplastics (fragments of less than 5mm), get into the food chain of invertebrates, fish, and birds. Plastic smothers shorelines and accumulates in the beds of wetlands. It engulfs birds, fish, and marine mammals. It can block natural water flow paths in creeks and wetlands. Floating and settling plastic debris can block light from seagrass.

While wetlands are effective at filtering pollutants and absorbing nutrients and carbon from urban and agricultural runoff, wetlands need to be managed for these functions, and effective pollution reduction usually requires a carefully designed and managed artificial wetland system. Absorbing plastic pollution is not good for natural wetland systems.

Why is local, national and international plastic pollution important to us at the Hunter Wetlands Centre?

The Hunter Wetlands Centre and large parts of the Hunter River estuary are listed as a Ramsar site – they are wetlands of international importance. The main reason for this is the significance of our wetland places for water birds and shore birds.

At the Hunter Wetlands Centre some of our birds stay with us all year, others move within Australia, depending on what’s happening with water in inland wetland sites. The Hunter estuary is one of the most import sites in Australia for migratory shorebirds. They travel to us in the spring, from far into the northern hemisphere – from Alaska, Korea, Japan, and northern China, via the East Asian Flyway. They return north in the autumn. The life cycle of birds linked to our Ramsar Convention status is supported by the Australian Government being a signatory to international treaties (with Japan, China, and Korea) to protect habitat for migratory shorebirds.

Plastic pollution throughout eastern Asia and the Pacific is therefore important to the survival of the bird species for which the Hunter estuary is famous.

What is the UN and Ramsar Convention doing to tackle plastic pollution?

This year’s World Environment Day, June 5, comes two months before countries meet at a UN Forum to continue negotiating a global treaty to end plastic pollution. While progress has been made, it’s a slow and complex process. In this document Ramsar identifies the critical impacts of plastic pollution on internationally significant wetlands and outlines what is being done at an international level to address the crisis.

The video 'Closing in on an end to plastic pollution' outlines the challenges in these negotiations. As a global issue, plastic pollution needs global partnerships and commitments to big changes.

What are we doing at Hunter Wetlands Centre to help reduce the impact of plastics on valuable wetlands?

The Hunter Wetlands Centre exists to restore and conserve wetlands, to increase community awareness and education about the value of wetlands and threats to their health, and to encourage collaborative effort to look after the special wetland places in the Hunter estuary.

Our volunteers are vigilant about picking up any plastic that enters our site through stormwater. That includes plastic bottles and lids, soft plastic packaging and plastic bags. We know that plastic that settles in our ponds is bad for benthic fauna (the things living in the sediment) and bad for the birds feeding on the wetland plants and invertebrates. In tidal waters, plastic waste clings to mangrove stems and roots, and settles in estuary sediments – again a pathway into the food chain of important and threatened bird and fish species.

We encourage our members and volunteers to also support and participate in clean ups in waterways and riparian zones – along creeks and rivers, the estuary, wetlands, and ocean shorelines. Once a year is good, but not enough. We encourage visitors to not bring single use plastics onto our site. Today, there are easy and effective replacements for plastic drink bottles and wrappings for food. Our café serves water and other drinks in reusable jugs and glasses. They do not use plastic straws or cutlery. They avoid plastic wrap wherever possible.

We work with other community organisations and with local and state government to support minimisation of plastic use, encourage reuse and recycling, and remove plastic waste from waterways. We strongly support legislation to ban single use plastics in NSW and beyond.

Through our involvement in Ramsar, we are part of initiatives across the international wetlands network to reduce plastic pollution of wetlands.

Actions we can all take to reduce macro plastic and microplastic pollution to wetlands and marine waters

Reducing MACROplastics

In 2023/24 the NSW Government released discussion papers with suggestions for rapidly reducing plastic load to the natural environment. The aim was to reduce plastic litter by 30% by 2025 and 60% by 2030. It’s clear from the actions that plastic permeates every aspect of our lives – so there are many opportunities to avoid unnecessary plastic use and substitute other less harmful materials. These are just some of the small changes you can make that will have a big impact:

•Carry a water bottle and a reusable coffee cup with you.

•Create a picnic kit with reusable storage, plates, and cups.

•Be very careful about litter when you are out and about.

•Take your waste home with you and dispose of properly.

•Remember an overflowing bin is the same as dropping waste in the gutter, or onto the shoreline.

•Bring your own shopping bags with you and choose either cloth bags or bags containing a very high recycled plastic content.

•Purchase meat, fruit and vegetables, and other foods loose – not sealed in hard and soft plastic trays.

•If you are buying new appliances, find out if the store will take back the packaging for recycling – it can include soft plastics, hard plastics, polystyrene, cardboard, and timber.

•Advocate for the use of plastics that are free of harmful chemicals, and for manufacturing processes that enable ‘circular economy’ reuse and recycling of plastic embedded in products.

Reducing MICROplastics – you might be surprised!

Based on the data available, PCT 2020 identified four major primary sources of microplastics entering the oceans. These were dust from vehicle tyres, pellets from plastic production, personal hygiene products and textiles. These are separate from and additional to any load coming from the breakdown of other plastic materials in the environment. While government regulation clearly has a role in reducing pollution loads from these sources, they are all sources over which individual citizens have some control. We can:

•Drive fewer kilometres on the road and use tyres with reduced abrasion risk.

•Stop using personal hygiene products containing microplastics (many of these products are now banned).

•Reduce purchase of clothing and other household items made of synthetic fabrics.

•Buy a washing machine that can filter out microplastic fibres.

•Reduce use of plastic products wherever there is a viable alternative, reducing production.

•Avoid use of single use plastics and find alternatives wherever possible.

•Lobby governments and businesses to take action on regulation, investment in technology, advocating for the health of wetlands and the marine environment.

•And, of course, in addition to avoiding plastic use, we can all reuse, recycle and dispose of plastics in ways that reduce the load of degraded (but still very long lasting) plastic fragments to waterways.

So, this World Environment Day, on 5 June, be part of the action to reduce plastics entering our wetlands, creeks, and marine waters. We all benefit from healthy and productive wetlands in our local area. And we can support one of the marvels of nature – helping to reduce a key threat to migratory shorebirds that join us over summer. #BeatPlasticPollution

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