DOI: 10.5061/dryad.qjq2bvqn8
title: Data for: Legacy community science data suggest reduced beached litter in response to a container deposit scheme at a local scale

description: Marine debris is causing significant environmental harm. Legislation is
 being implemented to reduce litter, including schemes like container
 deposit legislation that incentivize the return of commonly littered items
 for recycling. While there is a suggestion that these schemes reduce
 litter, no study has examined the long-term impact on the local
 environment before and after implementation. This study analyzes community
 science data from 8 years prior to the implementation of a container
 deposit scheme, paired with 3 years of data afterwards, to assess the
 scheme's effectiveness at a local scale. Although using legacy
 datasets limits the generalizability of the conclusions compared to
 dedicated studies, the findings strongly indicate that container deposit
 schemes effectively manage targeted containers but have little impact on
 overall waste abundances. Long-term datasets like these are invaluable for
 assessing the impact of management efforts.
description: # Legacy community science data suggest reduced beached litter in response
 to a container deposit scheme at a local scale *** This bundle contains
 all data needed to replicate the anslysis from the short communication
 "Legacy community science data suggest reduced beached litter in
 response to a container deposit scheme at a local scale". The work
 published in Marine Pollution Bulletin Oct 2023
 [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2023.115471](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2023.115471 "Persistent link using digital object identifier"). ## Description of the data and file structure There are two sets of analyses in this data bundle. First, wind and current roses for data in the Whitsunday region. The code "Roses\_R1.R" relies on the function "WindRose\_f.R" "Roses\_R1.R" is the script used to create wind and current roses for Figure 1 in the manuscript. The input files for these are available in the zip file "dataFilesForRoses.zip" In that zip folder are: "BowenAirport\_wind.txt" - a comma-separated values of 30 min wind speed and direction "IMOS\_aggregation\_20230731T055220Z.zip" - an archive file containing current data files. 1\. "IMOS\_\-\_OceanCurrent\_\-\_gridded\_sea\_level\_anomaly\_\-\_Delayed\_mode\_\-\_DM02\.xml" \- metadata for the altimetry data 2\. "IMOS\_aggregation\_20230731T055220Z\.nc" \- netCDF file containing ocean altimetry including u and v components of current 3\. "request\.xml" \- details of the request to the Australian Ocean Data Network https://portal\.aodn\.org\.au/ <br> Second, data processing and analysis for the MBACI of debris data. The code "CDS\_script\_forMS.r" contains data wrangling and analyses for community science data, the script reads in the two data files: 1\. "ecobarg\_event\_data\.csv" \- contains all Whitsunday records from the Australian Marine Debris Initiative database until 2021 2\. "Ecobarg\_2022\_data\.csv" \- contains eco barge own records for 2022\. ## Sharing/Access information This is a section for linking to other ways to access the data, and for linking to sources the data is derived from, if any. Links to other publicly accessible locations of the data: * https://www.tangaroablue.org/amdi/ * https://portal.aodn.org.au/search