Feedback now closed

Thank you to those who provided feedback on the Draft Plan. We are currently incorporating the feedback in to the revised Draft Plan with the aim of presenting it back to Council to considering adopting it in April. We will update this page with further information in April.

About the issue

Maintaining a clean city involves preventing litter in the first place, providing a range of services such as street bins for people to dispose of their waste when they are on the go, street sweeping to keep the streets clean and cleaning up dumped rubbish and litter when it occurs.

Providing these services requires significant amounts of Council staff time and budget. We want to focus more on prevention and less on cleaning up so we have developed a draft dumped rubbish and litter plan for broad consultation.

The four-year draft plan and action plan will be key to achieving our vision for Banyule to be a cleaner, more liveable city with a culture rejecting rubbish dumping and littering. The actions are based on the principle of shared responsibility within Council and between businesses, land managers, industry and the community to prevent dumped rubbish and litter.

Our Vision

Banyule and Litter

Banyule is renowned for its open spaces and plentiful parklands, especially along the Plenty and Yarra River corridors. There is also a wide range of sporting and leisure facilities, and shopping centres with their own distinctive personality. Overall, Banyule is a clean place to live but, similar to many other areas in Melbourne, we experience the frustrations of dumped rubbish and litter, something we, along with the wider community, want to stop.

Keeping Banyule clean and beautiful doesn't come cheap. The cost of providing street bins and maintaining a clean city through street sweeping and cleaning up illegally dumped rubbish is conservatively estimated to be just over $2 million per year.

We've developed a four year plan using extensive research and analysis, and also used a community survey and workshops with key groups.

Take a look at the Key Issues raised, and our response in the Draft Plan. Help us by telling us whether we are on track and if anything is missing.

What we heard

As part of developing the draft plan a community survey was developed and mailed to 2,561 randomly selected ratepayers during February and March 2016. We received 627 responses that helped us understand the main concerns and priorities of the community. We also conducted workshops with community groups and consulted our staff and other agencies involved in the area.

Priorities

The feedback and research we did identified six key behaviors that often occur. These are also the key priorities that the plan tries to deal with.

  1. Dumping unwanted belongings
  2. Dumping materials after receiving payment for legal disposal (such as mulch dumped by a business paid to take it away)
  3. Players and spectators littering at sporting events at Banyule facilities
  4. Littering food packaging including drink containers and other recyclable items
  5. Not picking up dog poo
  6. Taking shopping trolleys away from stores and then abandoning them

Views on litter

There were also a range of interesting views about the impact of litter and what people think of as litter and dumped rubbish. Did you know...

  • 9 out of 10 residents think litter makes neighbourhoods look bad
  • 9 out of 10 residents know not picking up dog poo is littering
  • 9 out of 10 people believe council should prosecute litterers and dumpers
  • 9 out of 10 residents pick up litter when they see it
  • 8 out 10 people hold onto their waste until they find a bin, even if it is all the way home
  • 7 out of 10 residents know putting your unwanted belongings out the front is littering
  • 6 out of 10 residents think it is legal to throw away an apple core

Draft Plan

Our Draft Plan includes 3 Strategic Directions and a range of Objectives and Actions designed to respond to key issues. A summary is presented below or view the full Draft Dumped Rubbish and Litter Action Plan.

DIRECTION 1: BEST PRACTICE SERVICES

We want to deliver the best possible services and programs we can to respond to this issue.

1.1.1 Develop and implement an ongoing comprehensive education and community engagement strategy to support all of Council’s activities to reduce dumped rubbish and general litter targeting all cohorts.

1.1.2 Investigate the feasibility of introducing public place recycling in Banyule to reduce litter and recover recyclables.

1.1.3 Implement VLAA’s illegal dumping prevention program, that includes education, infrastructure and enforcement, to reduce rubbish dumping.

1.1.4 Work with sporting clubs to ensure compliance with the licence requirement to leave sporting grounds clean.

1.1.5 Implement VLAA’s dog poo litter prevention toolkit, that includes education, infrastructure and enforcement, to reduce dog poo in streets and parks.

1.1.6 Develop and implement an internal Council and external community program promoting reporting apps to reduce abandoned shopping trolleys.

1.1.7 Develop a program for the installation of Gross Pollution Traps to protect waterways subject to high litter loads.

1.2 IMPROVING SYSTEMS

As we are involved in directly responding to litter and rubbish we want to improve our systems to get better.

1.2.1 Identify and implement improvements to Council’s customer request management system to achieve efficiencies across Council and in response times.

1.2.2 Establish a dumped rubbish and litter taskforce to implement and monitor the action plan led by a project sponsor.

1.2.3 Implement a rapid response approach to dumped rubbish with revised service standards to increase enforcement and reduce removal time for dumped rubbish.

1.2.4 Engage Council’s internal Enviroreps team to support delivery of the action plan and promote to Banyule staff.

1.2.5 Review and monitor performance of Council’s litter management services to identify and implement efficiencies.

1.2.6 Increase enforcement of rubbish dumping and littering offences (relies on SD1.2.1 and 1.2.4) to reduce dumped rubbish and litter.

DIRECTION 2: CULTURE CHANGE

We think part of addressing litter and dumped rubbish is about building a culture of shared responsibility that rejects dumped rubbish and litter. Take a look at the Objectives proposed in this area.

2.1 Continue Council’s ongoing litter education and prevention program.

2.2 Develop and implement a ‘call to action’ program providing the tools to ‘take action’ to build a culture that rejects litter and dumped rubbish.

2.3 Develop a program to build community pride (relies on SD3 Action 1) to encourage community members to take pride in their neighbourhoods, keep them clean and encourage others to do the right thing.

2.4 Continue working with the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Housing to reduce dumped household goods on nature strips of their properties.

2.5 Work with land managers such as Melbourne Water, Parks Victoria, VicRoads and VicTrack to reduce dumping and littering on their land and prevent litter entering waterways.

2.6 Work in partnership with real estate agents and Owner’s Corporations to ensure their tenants are well informed about Environmental Waste Services.

DIRECTION 3: ADVOCACY

We think that a critical part of addressing this issue is to advocate for external measures to reduce dumped rubbish and litter.

3.1 Advocate for metropolitan-wide or statewide programs targeting shared council priorities to reduce dumped rubbish and litter.

3.2 Continue advocacy for increasing funding for councils to deliver programs to reduce dumped rubbish and litter.

Your Feedback

Your Thoughts

After reading the key issues raised and seeing what is proposed in the Draft Plan, we would like to hear your thoughts.

Objectives and Actions

Do you agree that the objectives and actions in the plan will respond to the issues of dumped rubbish and litter in Banyule?

Gaps and Opportunities

The survey form is now closed. Thanks for your contributions.