Environmental groups have been armed with a new tool to help reduce plastic and other rubbish washing up on Australian beaches and waterways.
The Australian Marine Debris Initiative app, launched by environmental group Tangaroa Blue Foundation, allows rubbish found during clean-ups to be collated in one database.
While the foundation has been collating data on beach clean-ups across Australia since it began in the south-west of Western Australia in 2004, managing director Heidi Taylor said the new app allows anyone across Australia to contribute.
"We're hoping it'll make it easier for people to record items that they are collecting on the go, but also just using the latest technology to enable us to collect even more details such as barcodes and take images for that database as well," she said.
Barcodes help to find the source
Ms Taylor said barcodes can sometimes show where the item was made, which helps to trace the rubbish to its origin.
"Using that data to try and track the debris back to the source will help us figure out why these are ending up in our environment and what needs to change to prevent that in the future," she said.
According to CSIRO research most of the rubbish that washes up on Australian beaches is plastic waste, and Ms Taylor said in some remote areas, very little is from Australia.
"Up in Cape York more than 90 per cent of the debris is actually coming from overseas," she said.
"We want the communities there to be able to show what they're actually dealing with and [scanning] the barcodes helps us do that."
Clean-up data 'provides the ammo'
Aaron Horsey has been involved in a number of beach and waterway clean-ups across the east coast of Australia, and said the app brought all the information together in one place.
"If we do it all together and it's all kept in one location it's going to be more valuable as a nation to make change," he said.
In June, Mr Horsey worked with a group of volunteers to audit the rubbish found in 14 drain sites across the Mackay central business district in north Queensland.
They found the city had a waste problem, with large amounts of plastic wrappers, cigarettes and cans found.
"Cigarettes were the big one, out of 14 traps I'd say we had a couple of thousand cigarette butts," he said.
While cleaning out the drain prevents the rubbish running into waterways, he said not tracking what is found inside is a missed opportunity to create change.
"It gives us more ammo to approach businesses to say 'hey, you realise that there were 50 Mentos packets directly in that storm water pit'," Mr Horsey said.
"To back that up with a few images and stuff, I think it's a fairly powerful image."
Different beaches, different pollution
Mr Horsey said the data also helps to show local businesses and governments how different coastlines can have different pollution problems.
"I have been to some clean ups down in Port Phillip Bay and the material that you'll capture down there is so much different to the beaches that we have up in Queensland," he said.
For Ms Taylor the app is just one more tool to help tap in on the growing public interest around marine pollution.
"This issue is now getting a lot of air time," she said.
"Back in 2004 it wasn't really on the radar.
"We are starting to look at this as a real serious issue, that we all need to address."
