It started with a flooded tennis court. Not an unusual sight after a downpour, but for Year 12 student Annie He, it was the moment she began to see something most of us walk straight past — how easily everyday litter finds its way into our waterways.
Annie was chosen to take part in the Youth for Seas (Y4S) Leadership Programme, an initiative that challenges young people to identify real environmental issues in their communities and work towards practical solutions. For Annie, the answer was closer to home than she expected. Litter collecting on and around the school hockey courts after heavy rain, she realised, doesn’t just sit there. It gets washed into stormwater drains and, from there, into streams and eventually the ocean.
Her research led her to the LittaTrap — a filter that sits inside a stormwater drain and captures litter, plastics and debris before they can escape into waterways. Rainwater passes through freely, but solid waste is caught in a basket that can be easily removed, emptied and analysed. Simple, practical and effective.
A LittaTrap was installed at Pinehurst in 2025, and Annie has been monitoring it ever since. The first collection said a lot. The bulk of the material was organic — leaves, soil and natural debris — but alongside it were packaging plastics, soft plastics, hard plastics, paper and other small pieces of human-made waste that would otherwise have disappeared silently into the stormwater system. Dozens of pieces, caught before they could cause harm.
It is easy to underestimate how quickly small pieces of litter can travel once rainwater gets moving. Annie’s project makes that journey visible — and interruptible.
The LittaTrap will continue to be monitored, and the plan is to bring more students into the project over time, growing it into a long-term, student-led initiative. Beyond Pinehurst, there is ambition to share the model with other schools across NZ — showing that meaningful environmental action doesn’t have to be complicated. Sometimes it starts with one student, one drain, and the curiosity to ask why.
