Noosa Council on Tuesday launched its world-first attempt to remove polystyrene waste from beaches when it contracted Cleanaway to use a modified general waste vacuum to suck up the small white particles and sieve out the sand.
The polystyrene particles were left behind after a number of pontoons washed ashore during the floods in February.
Council’s acting environment services manager Shaun Walsh said with no information available on such a clean up Council and Cleanaway had to think of how to do it.
“With no purpose-built technology for tackling this issue – the removal of polystyrene pollution from beaches – there are a lot of stakeholders watching how this operation goes,“ he said.
Wet weather had hampered plans to deploy the vacuum earlier in May and the steep sand cliffs that have formed along the eastern beaches by rough surf over the past few months made it difficult for the Cleanaway truck to access the dune areas where the wind has swept most of the particles, but extension hoses were brought in to extend its reach.
Once assembled for its first run at Castaways Beach the vacuum was doing its job, albeit rather slowly, and with hundreds of metres of sand dunes to cover before it, but the focus is to be on identified problem areas around beach accesses 43 and 58.
A Council crew was brought in to follow behind the vacuum operator to collect remaining particles by hand.
Mr Walsh thanked the community for their tremendous effort supporting the clean-up by hand in recent weeks.
“It’s been a huge help in tackling this problem so far,“ he said.
“Bags are still available at the busier beach access points for anyone who’d like to help the clean-up by filling a bag and returning it to the access point when done.”
Mr Walsh said the process would be documented for future cleanups and Council planned to host a roundtable of environmental group and relevant government departmental representatives to discuss future measures.
