Sydney Water is calling on people to put their rubbish in the bin as figures show more than one million plastic bottles end up in Sydney waterways each year.
Sydney Water Service Delivery Officer Robert Allen said they are removing rubbish from 75 gross pollutant traps every few weeks.
“On average we remove about 700 cubic metres or about seven tonnes of plastic bottles from our traps each year, which is the equivalent of about 2,900 wheelie bins full of plastic bottles,’’ he said.
‘’Paced side-to-side this number of wheelie bins would stretch for over one kilometre.
“Sydney Water spends about $420,000 each year removing rubbish from our gross pollutant traps and about $150,000 of this is spent just to remove and appropriately disposal of plastic bottles.’’
Traps in St George include at Towson Lane at Bexley, Subway Road at Rockdale, Lundy Avenue at Kingsgrove, and Wiggs Road at Riverwood.
Mudcrabs Co-ordinator Peter Munro said litter didn’t belong in our waterways.
The ecological volunteer group cares for the Cooks River and surrounding waterways.
‘’While we prefer that litter didn’t get into our rivers in the first place, the litter booms are removing large amounts of the floating litter, improving the health and appearance of the rivers and protecting our wildlife,’’ he said.
