Striking Where it Starts – Source Reduction Workshops

In collaboration with Tangaroa Blue Foundation, Catarina from Adrift Lab helped coordinate two Source Reduction Plan (SRP) workshops around Mornington Peninsula in Victoria.

The first workshop engaged businesses and individuals from different communities around Mornington with the ultimate goal of promoting the involvement of the community in the The Peninsula’s Last Straw project to reduce the use of plastic straws. The project originated from a previous SRP workshop held in 2017 by Tangaroa Blue where data from the Australian Marine Debris Initiative (AMDI) Database was reviewed to help identify what items where impacting the local beaches as marine debris. The Peninsula’s Last Straw was developed as a SRP following the workshop and is now being recognized as one of the most successful Source Reduction projects in the state of Victoria.

The second workshop included a member of the community, Lynn, who hosts the Nurdles No More project. Lynn is eager to find the source of the plastic resin pellet (nurdle) problem in the region. Lynn, Catarina, and Heidi from Tangaroa Blue spent the afternoon identifying locations to set up monitoring sites to sample these small pieces of micro-debris over the next few months.

The outcomes of both workshops will not only promote the reduction of plastic straws and nurdles in the region, but will also contribute to Catarina’s PhD to show how successful these reduction strategies are in preventing each item from escaping into the environment at a local level.

This project is supported in part by a grant from the National Geographic Society.