Tauranga Sunrise Rotary – A Pair of Socks for Tauranga
– Michele Beaton, Environment Committee – Jan 2022
 
When asked about the challenges to our oceans, Jacques Cousteau, ocean explorer and scuba-diving pioneer, once said that the biggest was that the air-sea interface was opaque. This hides both the complex marine ecology human beings depend on and the hugely damaging impact of their activities, which include using oceans as a rubbish tip, and retards understanding of the issues. Stormwater runoff is a major source of marine pollutants.
Tauranga Sunrise Rotary received funding from the Bay of Plenty Regional Council for two drain socks, sausage-shaped nets, and fitted them to stormwater outlets in central Tauranga just before Christmas.
 
Beyond trapping larger items of waste, especially plastics, their purpose is to stimulate community engagement with the pollution problem.
 
TSR’s vision is that while individuals will change their behaviour, community groups will go a step further and fit drain socks to their own storm-water outlets. Does that include YOU and your Rotary club? Read the information to be posted next to the socks and see what you think!
 
LOOK DOWN AT THE STORMWATER DRAINS IN FRONT OF THIS SIGN AND YOU’LL SEE SOMETHING UNUSUAL. Each is covered by a drain ‘sock’, designed to capture large items of waste washed off our city streets into the sea, but positioned here to catch your attention and get you involved in the solution to stormwater pollution! Stormwater drains spill untreated water into waterways and the sea from urban areas.
 
Water washes off roofs, roads, driveways, yards, parks, industrial areas and car parks. It’s likely to contain cigarette butts, oil and grease, soil, detergent, heavy metals, leaves, dog droppings and not least, plastic wrappings and containers. 14 million tonnes of plastic reach our oceans every year. Large items may trap and kill wildlife or be mistaken for food and swallowed. It takes centuries for plastic to break down completely, but in the meantime, it disintegrates into tiny pieces which enter food chains, including our own. Chemicals from plastics affect human health and microbes may be spread attached to it.
 
AS YOU CAN SEE, the socks capture large plastic items, but NOT sediments, chemicals or microbes. Out of sight, out of mind but dangerous just the same! • Sediment smothers habitats, for example, seagrass flats which are nurseries for young fish like snapper.
• Minerals, from overuse of fertiliser, for instance, cause algal blooms, which may be toxic.
• Hydrocarbons, from fossil fuel-powered vehicles, are poisonous to wildlife.
• And so are compounds of metals like zinc and lead, also from vehicles.
• Microbes from animal faeces may cause disease.
 
These cause steady loss of water quality and threaten the survival of our native animals and plants, as well as making our harbour and coastline unsafe for recreation and collecting kaimoana. Ngai Tamarawaho, the hapu holding mana whenua for part of Tauranga Moana, sums up our responsibilities perfectly: The cultural landscape, traditional lands, waters and the other ancestral taonga that have been handed down to us have placed an obligation on us – the present generation – to act as kaitiaki, guardians of these things to ensure that what we pass to the next generation is not diminished but rather has been enhanced by our kaitiaki tenure
 
Here are some things YOU can do to prevent these from reaching the ocean.
• Put rubbish in bins or recycle (even better reuse, repurpose) where possible. • Wash your car on the grass; take waste oil to the transfer station.
• Wash off paint and other chemicals inside, using water that will be treated.
• Support council and government moves to limit the discharge of all pollutants into waterways and the sea.
 
HAVE YOUR COMMUNITY GROUP OR SCHOOL REPRODUCE WHAT’S HAPPENING HERE AND INSTALL YOUR OWN DRAIN SOCKS! In fact, SUPPORT all moves to protect the health of marine environments, because our well-being depends on theirs.