Hotspots A Methodology For Identifying, Prioritising And Tackling Litter In Urban Environments R Catchlove 1 and M Francey 2 1 Melbourne Water, robert.catchlove@melbournewater.com.au 2 Melbourne Water, matt.francey@melbournewater.com.au Abstract Litter has a major impact on the Yarra River. There are social and environmental impacts as well as significant cleanup costs. There is also a strong desire from the community and government agencies to reduce litter on the streets and in our waterways, particularly the Yarra River. Fundamental to reducing litter at its source is focussing on those areas that generate the greatest volume of litter litter hotspots. So, what and where are hotspots? To date there has been no comprehensive approach that enables agencies to identify and prioritise litter hotspots, and more importantly apply this methodology to areas outside the boundary of one municipality. This paper presents a new approach to developing a systematic assessment of litter across the catchment, which can then form the basis for preventative strategies. This paper details the limitations of using planning zones (the residential, commercial, industrial distribution) and also the weakness of using catchment boundaries to determine hotspot boundaries. It also details the problems in verifying hotspots. This methodology has identified 15 hotspot precincts within the lower Yarra. This constitutes 2.5% of the land area of 14185 hectares. Various strategies under the er Yarra Litter Strategy are now in progress to look at how to prevent litter in these hotspots. Introduction Litter is a sign of a wasteful society (Sustainability Victoria, 2007). Litter management and litter prevention are some of the most difficult issues that councils have to deal with due to the lack of any proven solutions. Litter is a problem both from a social perspective but also from a cleanup perspective. The different jurisdictions and different priorities of agencies in addressing litter means that a consistent approach across an entire region is difficult. There is a strong desire from the community and government agencies to reduce litter on the streets and in our waterways. This resulted in the creation of the er Yarra Litter Strategy which aims to reduce litter in the lower Yarra River and improve water quality in the lower Yarra catchment. As a result, Melbourne Water and Sustainability Victoria, in partnership with the Cities of Melbourne, Yarra, Stonnington and Boroondara, have made a commitment to improving water quality, through the er Yarra Litter Strategy. Parks Victoria and EPA Victoria are also involved in the strategy (Melbourne Water, 2005). The er Yarra Litter Strategy gives councils an opportunity to share information on a regular basis and compare their strategies in dealing with what they classes as litter hotspots. Litter is one of many environmental issues and, since there are limited funds to spend on these types of projects, it is logical to target particular areas that are known to be litter hotspots. From an individual council perspective, litter hotspots are generally well known internally and are commonly dealt with through more intensive street cleaning regimes. There was limited council officer enthusiasm to work on this project because it was akin to telling us
how to suck eggs. From a State perspective it is important to undertake a Litter Hotspot analysis in order to have confidence that Victoria can meet the targets set out in the Towards Zero Waste Strategy (Sustainability Victoria, 2005). Litter in this paper is defined as gross pollutants greater than 5mm in diameter. The aim of mapping litter hotspots is to understand the generation of inorganic litter, since this type of litter is preventable. Current litter strategies Victoria is currently in the process of updating the Victorian Litter Strategy, initially developed in 1995. A new strategy should be released by the Department of Sustainability and Environment towards the end of 2007. Some of the council based strategies in operation right now across the lower Yarra include: Increased frequency of street cleaning in shopping strips and carparks; Parking restrictions in residential and commercial areas to allow street cleaners access to the curb (Relf, pers comms, 2006) Use of public place recycling schemes A Butt Free Business program in the CBD (Kilgower, H., 2007). Litter Blitzes in shopping strips. (City of Yarra, 2006). Increased street cleaning during autumn periods to remove leaf litter. Existing data collection Data is an important part of managing litter. It helps quantify the nature of the problem and evaluate litter prevention projects. Data from the volume of litter in bins, on the street and in litter traps are all recorded by councils. This data is useful from a broad perspective, but it doesn t establish where litter is accumulating. Sustainability Victoria have undertaken two comprehensive surveys across Victoria to assess the nature of litter and littering behaviour. This data is in the form of the Clean Communities Assessment Tool (CCAT). This is data that is collected at a site and accounts for litter counts, infrastructure and behaviour (Community Change, 2003). CCAT data is discussed further in relation to verifying litter hotspots. Methodology Local knowledge and community complaints have traditionally been the way that councils have identified and managed litter in a hotspot. The purpose of working on a methodology was to remove some of the bias of local knowledge and raise the profile of alternative strategies, as well as transfer knowledge between councils on how to categorise a hotspot. The methodology of identifying litter hotspots is as follows: 1. Map the planning zones; 2. Add more specific datasets such as public bin locations, gross pollutant trap locations, transport routes and stops, location of schools, hospitals, and public housing estates; 3. Refine Geographic Information System (GIS) layers to allow local knowledge to guide the process (for example create a layer of Transport hubs to indicate litter generation around major transport stops) 4. Draw boundaries around areas with multiple influences on litter generation;
5. Categorise each hotspot with the current strategy in place; 6. Verify the nature of hotspots through CCAT assessment. To undertake this methodology a lot of data is required in GIS format. This in itself is a challenge due the differing systems that councils run and the format and quality of the data that is on record. Data from Yarra, Stonnington, Melbourne and Boroondara was collated into Mapinfo and then analysed to look at how multiple layers helped guide defining a litter hotspot. From this process it became apparent that some layers were of more importance than others. Table 1 lists the data considered to be of high quality for mapping litter hotspots. Table 1 - Datasets for litter hotspot mapping Dataset Cafes Gross pollutant trap (GPT) catchment Pubs / Clubs Take-Aways Transport Hubs Commercial Zone Educational Institutions Litter Bins Stadiums Public Housing Estates GPT Stormwater Pits Bus Stops Floating Litter Traps Hospitals Parks Train Stations Tram Stops Quality of dataset Medium Medium This methodology is taking a different look at litter generation. Traditionally engineers and planners consider that all areas of a city contribute to litter generation and these can be generally categorised as residential, commercial and industrial (Allison, R. et al, 1998). Catchments are then drawn and appropriate traps are considered based on the expected litter load. The methodology in this paper differs by asking a series of questions before treatments are considered.
Where is litter coming from? Draw hotspot boundaries based on clustering of litter generation layers Outline current strategies (traps. education programs, street cleaning Consider alternative strategies (including GPTs) Figure 1 Questions to develop a picture of a litter hotspot This methodology is not flawless. There have been difficulties in collating data, agreeing on the quality of different datasets, and convincing council officers that it is useful to look at litter hotspots outside their jurisdiction. Results The process described above has produced numerous maps showing clusters of activity and council assets. Figure 4 is an example output which maps commercial zones (purple), educational institutions (yellow), bins (triangles) and transport hubs (large black circles). The results indicate that commercial zones themselves are not enough to categorise an area as a hotspot. For example, antiques shops, accountants, and IT developers all operate in a business zoned area, but are extremely unlikely to generate litter around their premises. Transport layers were also interesting in the results. Mapping every single tram and train stop just gave a blanket look to the lower Yarra, so it was decided that local knowledge should be introduced to map transport hubs rather than each individual stop. Figure 2 is an example of all transport stops as well as the hubs.
Figure 2 Transport stops in City of Boroondara with hubs. Figure 3 Stormwater pits: obviously not useful in establishing hotspots. The best quality data in terms of identifying litter hotspots is takeaways, cafes and pubs and club locations. This dataset is quite hard to get, since not all councils have a list of all businesses in their municipality. These datasets were agreed to have a high probability of generating litter.
Figure 4 Combination of multiple factors (bins, education institutions, commercial zones and transport hubs) in Hawthorn that determines the hotspot boundaries. Figure 5 All Litter Hotspot in the lower Yarra.
This methodology has identified 15 hotspot precincts, constituting 2.5% of the 14185 hectares on the lower Yarra. The yellow areas in Figure 5 are areas that were deemed to be secondary hotspots areas. Future strategies in litter hotspots The next stage of this project is to gather data to verify all the hotspots in Figure 5 and look at some alternative strategies. A comprehensive survey across all hotspots, with some controls sites (or coolspots) is required to determine how accurate the GIS data is and whether this methodology could be applied across a greater area. Some of the common reasons for an area being designated a litter hotspot are: presence of nightclubs, large carparks behind shopping centres, the presence of a transport hub, and the presence of a series of cafes, takeaways and pubs. Through the er Yarra Litter Strategy, councils are trialling some intervention strategies based on the results of this work. In Victoria St Richmond, City of Yarra has commenced the Victoria St Green Star Business Program. This is an alternative strategy that engages with the business community and was based on surveys completed by Environment Victoria. These surveys indicated the willingness of the community to improve Victoria St and prevent litter on the street going into the waterways. Conclusions Mapping of litter hotspots is crucial to improving the quality of the Yarra River and creating cleaner shopping strips for the community. This methodology has revealed that hotspots lie predominantly in commercial areas, in the vicinity of food markets and are influenced by transient populations. It is difficult to develop a list of hotspot areas without a comprehensive monitoring program across the whole area. The verification of these hotspots will be completed by the end of 2007. While other pollutants are considered to be uniformly spatially generated, litter doesn t conform to these ideas. This methodology is a means to work towards a more targeted approach to reducing litter at source. Successful intervention strategies trialled in hotspots within the lower Yarra will be important in tackling all of the hotspots over time. Knowledge from local councils will also help refine the hotspot methodology, References Allison, R.A., Chiew, F.H.S., and McMahon, T.A. (1998). A decision support-system for determining effective gross pollutant trapping strategies for gross pollutants, Cooperative Research Centre for Catchment Hydrology Report. City of Yarra, 2006. Litter Blitzes in major shopping strips. Community Change, 2003. Victorian Litter Monitoring Protocol - Pilot Test & Benchmarks Using the Clean Communities Assessment Tool. Kilgower, H. 2007. City of Melbourne s Butt Free Business program and Butt Litter Audit. In Cigarette Butt Litter workshop for the er Yarra, April 2007.
Melbourne Water, 2005. The er Yarra Litter Strategy. Unpublished. Relf, S. 2007. Personnel communication. City of Stonnington. Sustainability Victoria, 2005. Towards Zero Waste Strategy. Sustainability Victoria, 2007. Litter Strategy background paper.