Plastic of Umina

    Many times, plastic gets littered onto the streets and along paths. In my hometown, a town/city called Umina, I see 2 to 5 pieces of trash along only a small circuit. This littering has to be stopped!
    What happens to a plastic bottle that is thrown on the ground in my local park? If the wind is strong enough, it could well go onto the side of the street. Then, the next time it rains, the bottle could get stuck in the gutter.
    I have crawled around one of these gutters before. Right below it the water enters a stone pipe. the pipe slants downward at a slight angle to guide the water. Even when it is dry outside, there is a trickle of water through it, and I can imagine that with all of the roofs in a street connected to a single pipe, the gutters have a gushing current of water whenever it rains.
    If there is a plastic bottle in the gutter, the bottle is swept wherever the water goes. And where is that? In the river, with Umina's victim being Kahibah wetland.
    Kahibah wetland contains many plants and swamp hens. Ducks swim there. I have even seen an Eastern Rosella there and my dog, Lyra, likes to romp around and swim there(Rebelliously). Is this really the place where all of the littering of Umina ends up?
    Kahibah wetland eventually turns into a creek and flows through some more wetlands before reaching the beach. Then plastic can flow down the beach along the river and go into the open ocean.
    Have you heard of the great pacific garbage patch? This is a place in the pacific ocean where the currents circle around and around, trapping pieces of plastic in a swirling garbage dump. This plastic gets broken down by the sun into flecks so small that a fish could easily mistake them for plankton. This is not the only animal that ends up getting plastic in its body. Turtles can mistake a plastic bag for a jellyfish. Birds can be attracted by the bright colours and feed plastic to its chicks. Rubbish on beaches is not a good thing.
    One day, after a shower of rain and a gale warning, lots of trash that blew into Kahibah creek ended up... At the beach. Me and my brothers noticed the trash and cleaned it up with a littered grocery bag and a long stick. Boy, there was a lot. Even my dog and my parents helped.
    So thanks to everyone who mindfully picks up plastic and deposits it in the trash where it belongs.