Litter means different things to different folks, and Lord Mayors from councils across Australia all have differing tolerance to litter. Those tolerances may be derived from community views or even the expectations of state premiers and their own personal preferences.
If you want to keep the community happy, to deliver results that keep your Mayor and other politicians happy, then you need to know their expectations. I’m a realist and accept that some level of litter will have to be agreed on, that knowledge will help establish some parameters, something to work within.
If you’ve taken the time to read through the S-A-O-I-E posting and some of the others here at BinScreensCreative.com.au you will now have an understanding of how looking at the size and age of litter helps when it comes to making informed decisions on how to best deal with litter.
Experience tells me that the size of the litter is the biggest influencing factor, even more so than the total litter count. I assess that the size of the litter is up to 40% of the overall importance.
The weighting I apply when looking at litter;
Size of litter, large – 40%
Size of litter, small – 15%
Total count of litter – 30%
Age of litter, fresh – 10%
Age of litter, mature – 5%
This large litter is an eyesore for all, the small bits of litter are there but not causing the same visual impact.
You can see I place significant weight on the size of the litter, and it’s the one component of litter that’s visible to residents and visitors to our towns and cities. Now that’s just my experience, and I’d recommend looking at litter in different locations yourself, from there you can decide what elements of litter you think are the biggest influences in your local community.
Here’s a short scenario that highlights the size of litter and how different people can interrupt it.
Imagine a small business on the main street of your town opening up for the day’s trade and along the footpath outside the shop is ten old bits of chewing gum and ten cigarette butts, we are looking at twenty pieces of small litter. Most businesses would just go about with their day’s trade oblivious to those little bits of litter.
Now take that same business and when the owners arrive to open up for the day they have five serviettes, five fast food wrappers, five cans and five water bottles. That the same number, twenty bits, but this time its large litter and that would have most areas looking terrible, businesses would indeed be concerned. It would also be of interest to the neighbouring businesses and even those across the road. People traveling past might also be concerned with the look of the area.
Those little bits of litter add up, but it’s the big bits that matter.
How does your Mayor, the community or even your colleagues look at litter?
I ask this question because the answers should be used in developing your cleaning routines and capabilities. If your Mayor or the community have a little or minimal interest in the visual appeal of the place, then litter is just acceptable. Now I wouldn’t know of many Lord Mayors who would accept a messy town, but there would be many who would take different places being littered and untidy to a degree. How about places like industrial estates, they are often far worse than many other parts of a town, is it that the Mayor doesn’t care?
What’s happened is that places have to be assessed in a hierarchical system, they have been identified, and the necessary activities or tolerance to litter is applied to them to help achieve the results. Here are a few examples;
- Main road into and out of the town
- Central Business District
- Area surrounding Council Chambers
- Major tourist attractions
- Waterfronts and rivers edges
- Major parks and memorials
Identifying the locations is not complex, what you must know is, what level of cleanliness is expected at each site. Here are three potential measurement systems that can quickly be developed.
* Visual/pictorial audit guide
* Litter count
* Report card rating
Personally, I believe that the report card rating is the fairest of the systems.
If you were to collect 100 bits of litter, 50 large bit’s and 50 small pieces and then stage them in photographs of a specific location, you could start gauging people’s assorted tolerances to litter. To do this effectively you need a single photographic point, and you will take multiple photographs of the same site with differing combinations of litter, large and small. A-B-C-D-F ratings should then rate these differing combinations.
Different amounts of large and small litter can be staged in the photographs, anyone can then create a rating. Tolerance to litter can then be identified.
– A site clean and litter free – total 0 litter? A
– A site with 5 small bits of litter and no large litter – total 5 bits of litter? A
– A site with 15 small bits of litter and 5 bits of large litter – total of 15 bits of litter? A-B
– A site with 25 small bits of litter and 10 bits of large litter – total of 25 bits of litter? A-B-C
– A site with 35 small bits of litter and 15 bits of large litter – total of 35 bits of litter? B-C
– A site with 45 small bits of litter and 20 bits of large litter – total 45 bits of litter? C-D
– A site with 0 small bits of litter and 45 bits of large litter – total of 25 bits of litter? D-F
– A site with 10 small bits of litter and 35 bits of large litter – total of 25 bits of litter? D-F
– A site with 20 small bits of litter and 25 bits of large litter – total of 25 bits of litter? C-D
– A site with 50 small bits of litter and no large litter – total of 25 bits of litter? A-B
You’re not looking to create a single line in the sand that tells you when a site is a failure, an F. Unacceptable amounts of litter are easy to identify; it’s the other end of the scale where it’s harder to split hairs. Most councils should be comfortable working with a rating of C or better, as long as you are generating more assessments that rate B or better. That has your council heading in the right direction, and it comes about from refining cleansing and bin structures, improving technologies and your community playing their part in keeping places clean.
Many councils would be comfortable working with a rating of C or better. If your regularly rating a C with several B or better ratings then your council would be heading in the right direction, and small improvements can come about from refining cleansing and bin structures, improving technologies and your community playing their part in keeping places clean.
The images you have created to assess tolerance can be displayed to community members, school students, the business sector and your colleagues, allow them to make the same assessments. It helps you in establishing you Mayor’s and your communities tolerance to litter. Over time people will understand the rating system, and if you were to stop a resident or visitor in the street and asked them to rate the area from A-F, their rating would be the same as or close to the rating’s you would have suggested.
This technique will also help you establish a feel for large litter, how its perceived by others. Now with this level of understanding of political and community expectations you can deliver the appropriate bins, cleaning routines and other efforts (enforcement-marketing-education, etc.) to keep your ratings within acceptable standards.
If your Council is committed to enforcement then compliance signs are a valuable part.
You and the team working on litter will have a set of goalposts to work towards; without these goalposts, you can be expending unnecessary energy, efforts or expense on actions that may not have been necessary. Please take the long game approach with your litter management, you will not fix it overnight but the closer everyone is to having similar goals and objectives the sooner you can start achieving experience results.
Please feel free to contact me at paul@wasteadspace.com.au if you have any questions on understanding tolerances.