Australia is home to the over 10,000 beaches and no part of Australia is more than 1,000km from the ocean. Our coasts are impacted by our actions on land. Rubbish and microplastics can be found washed up on almost every Australian beach.
Pollution and rubbish get washed into our rivers and waterways with stormwater runoff and end up on our coasts and oceans. Over 75% of this rubbish is plastic. Plastics in the environment can take hundreds of years to break down, thereby impacting marine species for generations.
I created the Caring for our Oceans activities for the Landcare Learning Centre. These are great activities to do with your high school students.
The Beach Survey provides a starting point to understand the types of rubbish in the marine environment.
The Beach Clean up can help you work together as a team and community to remove this of rubbish.
Remember everything we do on land has impacts on the marine environment. Follow the journey of water down the river through the catchment to the sea with the Story of a River.
