Australian consultant and innovator Anthony J. James posted an optimistic tweet saying: "Australians have installed their drainage network with nets so plastics and pollutants cannot reach rivers or seas. This doesn't require a lot of money. It requires willingness to change!"
A more sceptical twitterer reacted: "Very poor engineering to solve the problem though, the manpower and time to empty those nets is large. There would be a much better solution available using a grill across all the outlets which would allow a mechanised extraction of the waste items."
Regardless, this seems to be a quite cost-effective and simple way of reducing the amount of non-degradable waste in the nation's water systems.