On Great Barrier Island at the weekend hundreds of people chose to give up their free time and scour the island's coastline picking up rubbish for free.
The clean-up was organised by a group of young volunteers calling themselves ‘sustainable coastlines’.
The aim was to clean up the entire east coast of Great Barrier, most of it was covered and tonnes of rubbish was collected.
Many of the school children volunteering had never been on a boat before, let alone been to Great Barrier Island, so they were excited to say goodbye to busy Auckland for a day.
On the island, the kids are kitted out for their task, and the group from Wymondley Road School in Otara, hit the beach.
For these South Auckland kids, this was more than just a clean up.
Their principal says this trip is a rare opportunity to get them out of their community.
“For a lot of our children, they don't get many opportunities or experiences and when we heard that the coastal clean up was at Great Barrier Island, we thought hey, how cool is that? Our children get to travel to a place like Great Barrier which they probably [would never have had the chance],” says Principal Tone Kolose.
This is no ordinary beach clean up. It covered more than just one beach or two - in fact, it spanned the whole east coast of Great Barrier.
As well as school children, the crew of the Spirit of New Zealand, the Navy, the Coastguard and around 200 locals also helped out. Another boat load of around 250 volunteers from Auckland also helped out on day two.
They tackled the rubbish on foot along remote coastlines, and on the water in kayaks and boats.
Sam Judd saw the rubbish problem on Great Barrier while working as a diver, giving him the inspiration to get others on board - and so he did - all in the space of six weeks.
“I had someone who's a local here just ring me up the other day, and say oh you're doing a coastal clean up, I’ve got two boats and a house, you can have it all for free, it's just because there's a lot of people who care, they just need the excuse to go and do it,” says Sam.
And it took off.
Ending up with about 70 boats, including kayaks, dinghies, tinny's, inflatables and around 700 volunteers over two days.
Some volunteers couldn't believe the volume of rubbish they found.
“Shocking, I can't see anywhere where there would be any people around here and the beach, all you could see when you came in on the boat was all the litter all over,” said one volunteer.
The household rubbish probably originated in Auckland, but it gets washed across the Hauraki Gulf and ends up on a remote, uninhabited beach on Great Barrier Island.
We found the plastic bases off a couple of old cola bottles on this beach - they're ten or fifteen years old.
And after two days, more than two tonnes has been collected - all to be recycled.
As we waved a fond farewell to the locals and the island disappears onto the horizon - most felt they'd done their bit for mother nature, and had a nice little break to boot.