A week ago, me, my dad, and my sister went fishing at the Murray river. It was a long drive from Adelaide to Mannum, but we managed to get there.

Once we were there, we set up our fishing rods and casted them into the water. We waited. And waited. There was a little bit of plastic floating on top of the river a few meters away from us. We didn’t end up catching any fish the whole day. My family was just about to pack up when we saw a pelican out in the middle of the river.

The pelican swam by a large zip-lock bag floating on the water. It used its large beak to attempt to eat it. Luckily, it didn’t succeed. The bag kept flopping out. That is how much plastic is in the rivers, lakes and oceans.

We think the cause for the plastic in the river has something to do with the full bins and the stormy weather the day before. We think the lids of the bins were left open overnight (or the wind blew the open) and the stormy weather blew plastic out of it and into the river.

So, to be sustainable we must all use as little plastic as possible, put the plastic we do use in the bin when we are finished, put it in the correct bin and shut the bin.

Another solution would be asking the councils to instal more self-shutting bins.