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Home>Council Services>Waste & Environment>Litter
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| Litter is a form of environmental pollution that is very easy to see around us. A major challenge we face today is the protection of our environment for future generations. Each of us has the opportunity and the responsibility to work towards this goal by changing our behaviour. We see litter on the roadside, in the school playground and in the park. Litter is anything that is put where it is not meant to be, like a chocolate bar wrapper or a cigarette butt left on the ground in the street. Litter is an apple thrown out of the car window, a load that has not been secured properly on the back of a trailer, and the grass clippings that you sweep into the gutter.
Litter can look ugly and can cause harm to things around us. People can get cut on glass and metal. It is also dangerous to wildlife that can be poisoned, choked or strangled. It encourages pest animals such as rats, mice as well as the spread of germs.
We can often see unsightly collections of plastic bags and wrappers in the branches of trees and shrubs along our urban creeks after heavy rains. All that litter becomes highly visible when deposited by flood waters in the higher branches.
Sometimes visitors to the gardens or riverside may leave the remains of their lunch there such as plastic sandwich wrappings and drink cans and this is a problem. There is also another way that litter gets into our streams and this is by the stormwater system.
The stormwater system is designed to take rainwater from our guttering and streets into the closest waterway. Litter that is carelessly dropped on our streets is often washed into the stormwater system and ends up in our rivers, and eventually in our beaches. When you wash paintbrushes in the gutter, or pour oil or pesticides into the gutter, it flows directly into our stormwater system, and into our waterways, polluting them.
Everybody can take a part in stopping litter polluting our environment. We can make sure that we dispose of litter properly and also be active in stopping other people from littering.
A key element in helping people to change their behaviour is to make the changes as easy as possible by providing the right tools and infrastructure.
Infrastructure includes the provision of equipment, whether it be providing litter bins, personal ashtrays to people, butt bins on streets, or at the other end of the spectrum, gross pollutant traps (GPT), installed in the stormwater drainage system that catch items as small as cigarette butts.
Recently Victorian Councils (including Benalla Rural City Council) have embarked on Stormwater Management Plans that outline the risks to, and possible solutions, for pollution in our creeks and waterways. The plans include suggestions of potential locations for GPTs, however trapping litter from the stormwater system is a difficult and expensive task, particularly for small items such as cigarette butts. Installing GPTs is expensive and requires ongoing maintenance.
The challenge is to trap the litter yet allow water to flow through the stormwater system and not to increase flooding risks. It is far better to reduce litter before it reaches the drainage system.
Every cigarette butt damages our environment. The number of cigarette butts in the litter stream must be significantly reduced to protect the health, safety and visual quality of our environment. Butts travel into our waterways through the stormwater system. Butt litter also devalues our public areas; it makes them look dirty and uncared for and tends to attract more littering of all types and is a significant cost to the community's resources.
Providing smokers with tools on hand to dispose of the butts when they have finished with them – for example, use of personal ashtrays and street bins – is the standard the community wants smokers to do. Providing ashtrays would let smokers have their freedom of choice and would not cast any negative judgments, just positive goals. This is just one way that litter can be reduced.
Cigarette Butt Litter Facts
• Cigarette butts have consistently made the top ten of items picked up in the Clean Up Australia Day campaigns since it started in 1990.
• Each cigarette butt can take up to ten years to biodegrade.
• Cigarette butts are toxic.
• One in ten cigarette butts ends up in the bay or our waterways (Melbourne Water).
• Local Government spent over $41 million on litter in 2000/01, with 74% spent on street sweeping and the remainder on street litter bins and litter traps (EcoRecycle Victoria Municipal data survey 200/01).
• Dropped cigarette butts have been the cause of house fires, as well as some of the largest and most destructive bushfires.
• Smokers who have been made aware of the litter problem feel happy to help keep the environment clean, and there has been no problem with pollution from the ashtrays.
For more information see the following websites:
Victorian Litter Action Alliance - www.litter.vic.gov.au
EcoRecycle - www.ecorecycle.vic.gov.au/litter
Environment Protection Authority - www.epa.vic.gov.au
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