Winter tides and storms have washed a colourful sea of debris ashore on South Australia’s coastline, but it’s not a pretty sight.

Key points:

  • South Australians are being urged to report waste they find at their local beach
  • A large amount of waste has been discovered following winter storms
  • ‘The Adopt a Spot Scheme’ is centralising evidence of waste to enact change

Adopt a Spot co-founder Chris Lemar said many South Australians were posting devastating photos of the amount of waste washing up on pristine beaches, and he is calling for those photos to be sent in.

“We keep a tally of what they’re finding in their particular spot, and then we can go to their sitting member or council and bring the evidence to them.”

The Adopt a Spot Scheme is a volunteer-run organisation that encourages people who regularly clean their local beach spots to lay out their findings and take a photo of them so that each piece of plastic can be counted and collected as centralised data.

Adopt a Spot co-founders Carly Lynch and Chris Lemar are encouraging South Australians to send in photos from their beach cleans.(

Supplied: Chris Lemar

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“I think if these findings stay in the background and are not reported, things will continue because no-one can see what the issue is,” Mr Lemar said.

Growing action

Mr Lemar said so far, 170 sites had been adopted across the state.

“We have people from metro beaches in Adelaide. We’ve got ‘adopters’ from the Blue Lake all the way to the bottom of the Yorke Peninsula.

“We don’t have any adopters on the Eyre Peninsula and West Coast though, the furthest we have is Red Banks, Port Augusta.”

Mr Lemar said the items they had found had been shocking.

Bottle tops from the Sydney 2000 Olympics have washed up on SA beaches.(

Supplied: Chris Lemar

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“We found a Coke bottle lid that had promotional material on it from the 2000 Sydney Olympics,” he said.

“Cigarette butts are our number one item. We find more of that than any other identifiable item.”

Local push 

In Port Lincoln, eight-year-old Miriam Leschner organised her own clean-up of a local beach after learning about microplastics at school.

She invited a group of her friends to collect plastics and rubbish from Boston Island on Sunday.

“Instead of presents, I had money donated for my birthday party so I could have a beach clean-up,” Miriam said.

Eight-year-old Miriam Leschner organised a beach clean-up day on Boston Island near Port Lincoln on Sunday.(

Supplied: Rowena Leschner

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The group travelled to Boston Island and spent the afternoon collecting rubbish with charter operators Matt and Tracy Waller.

Mr Waller said, in 14 years, he had collected about five tonnes of marine rubbish, filling about 15 cubic metres.

Matt Waller says netting and rope from the fishing industry are disposed of the local dump, but there’s a greater problem of what to do with landfill waste.(

ABC Eyre Peninsula: Jodie Hamilton

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He said storm events dumped waste back on our doorstep.

Mr Waller said the aquaculture industry in Port Lincoln had worked to reduce rubbish going into the ocean.

Industry adopts beaches

“Fifteen years ago, the aquaculture industry started an adopt a beach program, and they don’t publicise it, but they do have a process of maintaining beaches four times a year,” Mr Waller said.

His concern was about once recovered, what then for plastics, netting and rope waste.

“The reason why we have rubbish tips is that we don’t know what to do with our rubbish,” Mr Waller said.