Council cuts illegal dumping by 94%
As well as our work with industry, a lot of what we do here at the EPA involves helping people to change their behaviour in areas such as litter, recycling, illegal dumping, and food waste.
But (as anyone who is already falling down on their new year’s resolutions knows) we humans can be creatures of habit and changing long-established behaviours isn’t easy. When someone gets it right, we want to give them a big shout out.
Canterbury-Bankstown Council had a huge problem with illegal dumping of household rubbish - around 1,400 tonnes a year of illegally dumped materials that Council had to pay to dispose of!
To tackle the problem, and using funds provided by an EPA grant, Council developed and trialled the ‘Eyes On It’ program in 2019. The program was designed to take a holistic approach to the dumping issue using education and enforcement to change people’s behaviours. This approach was expanded in 2022, helped by further funding from Waste Less, Recycle More’ to promote the bulky waste service as an alternative for residents to use instead of dumping.
Council found that simple actions could make a big difference to people’s behaviour. Identifying dumped material using highly visible stickers which included the words ‘illegal’ as well as tape indicating the pile was ‘under investigation’ and then leaving it there for three days, resulted in almost half (43%) of the dumps being removed from the kerb, often by the dumpers themselves! Overall, the 2019 ‘Eyes On It’ campaign tagged, reported and removed 6,686 illegal dumps, while community reporting of illegal dumping tripled, a strong sign of increasing community awareness.
In 2022, the Riverwood Housing Estate was identified as a dumping hotspot. Council worked hard to build strong relationships with the social housing provider in the area. This resulted in an 80% reduction in illegal dumping on the estate. The best piece of feedback Council got was “the estate is sparkling!” The approach was then extended to a smaller estate in Villawood, which saw an amazing 94% reduction, where regular monitoring in this community saw Council’s officer nicknamed fondly as “Council Lady!”
“We’ve noticed that small actions of care have had big impacts,” said Clean City Dumping Prevention Officer, Lisa Roach. “Residents responded really positively to seeing us there regularly and knowing that someone cares about where they live and is trying to make it a nicer place.”
In 2024, Council will implement the expanded ‘Eyes On It’ program in a further 14 priority areas, using education, strategic communication and engagement with residents, strata and social housing managers to change behaviour and collaboratively tackle the dumping issue.
A win for communities and the environment? That’s worth celebrating!