Now in its eighth year, the ReefClean program continues to deliver real impact to support a healthy Great Barrier Reef.
The Program has helped to significantly reduce the volume of marine debris entering the Reef. It delivers clean-up events and collects valuable data and uses this data on impactful source reduction projects.
The program is also helping take marine debris from the beach and ocean and into recycling pathways.
In 2025, program achievements included:
- 17.8 tonnes of marine debris removed
- 141 monitoring events, removing 76,295 items
- 103 GPS buoys recovered through #ProjectReCon
- 5.3 tonnes of debris transformed into Marine Derived Plastics (MDP©)
- more than 3.5 tonnes of marine debris diverted from landfill and into recycling pathway
- 33 community clean-ups and 153 Great Barrier Reef Clean-up events
The ReefClean ReefCycle program had a major milestone with the development of the Marine Derived Plastics (MDP©) pellets and processing methodology.
1,800 kilos of marine debris was diverted from landfill and made into MDP© for recycling pathways.
Proof of concept prototypes using MDP© have been developed for multiple products. This includes a furniture range repurposed from recycled materials.
The ReefClean Rig Recycle program continued its important work in collecting recreational fishing gear. This gear is then turned into premium sunglasses engineered for Australian conditions. 100% of sales go back to the program to develop more circular solutions.
ReefClean's Project ReCon is a world first program using retrieved and repurposed satellite technology to track and recover deadly ghost gear.
Through Project ReCon, Satlink buoys that cannot be reused are now entering a dedicated recycling pathway for their components including the supercapacitors and solar panels.
ReefClean is funded by Reef Trust and delivered by Tangaroa Blue Foundation in partnership with a variety of organisations.
