Polystyrene beads on the beach at Army Bay on Moturua Island last summer.
Photo: Supplied / Northland Regional Council

Leave your beanbags at home if you are heading to the beach this summer – that is the call from Northland’s environmental watchdog after a burst beanbag put wildlife in peril last summer.

The incident, on Moturua Island in the Bay of Islands, sparked a long and expensive clean-up after thousands of polystyrene beads ended up along the coast and in the sea.

Northland regional councillor Marty Robinson said beanbags, or anything containing polystyrene, were not welcome at the region’s beaches.

The floating beads, which travelled large distances and did not biodegrade, could harm or even kill fish and birds which mistook them for food, he said.

Robinson said the council managed to recover most of the beads in a clean-up that took several days, but a substantial number still found their way into rock crevasses or among shoreline debris at Army Bay.

He said the council was not trying to ruin beachgoers’ summer fun – but it was asking them to think about the environment when choosing what to take to the coast.

“Polystyrene is not an environmentally friendly product. It’s very stable and extremely hard to degrade in the environment. It will float and continue to spread to more remote coves and beaches which makes the clean-up even more time consuming and expensive.

“We are asking Northlanders and people visiting Northland beaches, coastal areas and reserves this summer not to take beanbags and products filled or made from polystyrene.”

The pristine Cavalli Islands were littered with polystyrene debris after a floating dock at privately owned Motukawaiti Island broke up during Cyclone Lusi in 2014.
Photo: Supplied

Robinson said anyone releasing polystyrene into the environment could be fined $750 or billed for the clean-up costs.

In another incident in February this year, a large amount of polystyrene was scattered on Moturoa Island, at the other end of the Bay of Islands, from a broken-up pontoon.

A burst beanbag also caused problems at East Beach, north of Kaitāia, during New Year festivities in 2018, and, in one of worst known cases in Northland, islands in the pristine Cavalli Group near Matauri Bay were blanketed in polystyrene in 2014.

Those fragments came from a floating dock that broke free from privately owned Motukawaiti Island during Cyclone Lusi.

The kayakers who discovered the pollution said polystyrene was piled up so high on some islands it looked like snowdrifts. The spread was made worse by a weeks-long delay by the island’s then owners to start the clean-up.

A single beanbag typically contains several hundred thousand polystyrene beads.