Two targeted campaigns by Bathurst Regional Council are helping the region take a smoke break from litter.
In 2021 and 2022, Bathurst Regional Council in New South Wales launched litter reduction projects with the hopes of decreasing harmful cigarette litter.
With a $35,000 grant from the NSW Environmental Protection Authority (EPA), the first 12-month project, titled ‘Cignificantly Reducing CBD Litter’, was a behavioural change and educational project.
It focused on proactive communication and social norming through a social media blitz, advertising, signage, media and enforcement.
The council decreased cigarette littering in the Local Government Area (LGA), increasing binning rates by 87.9 per cent and decreasing cigarette litter by 93.7 per cent.
Following the success of this project the Bathurst Base Hospital asked the council to extend the project, this time focusing on reducing litter on and around hospital grounds. A second NSW EPA grant of $48,119 helped the council launch “Banishing Bathurst Butts Beyond the CBD.”
Thomas Staff, Environmental Officer, Bathurst Regional Council, said not only did this project succeed in reducing litter by 85 per cent across hospital and suburban sites, but exceeded all expectations and went on to win a national award.
“Winning the Litter Prevention Tidy Town Award in the 2024 Keep Australia Beautiful Awards was a huge honour for the council and we are all very proud of what both campaigns achieved,” says Thomas.
“It shows us that we had a real impact on the community and others around the country. Sharing those achievements, methods and preventative actions with the public and other councils has been the biggest takeaway of the experience.”
In the lead-up to the first campaign, research by the NSW EPA indicated that about 1.32 billion butts are littered in New South Wales yearly. The council found this correlated with its own regional statistics.
“We constantly found large quantities of unlawfully discarded cigarette butts in a number of locations,” says Thomas.
“These areas included public transport terminals, parking infrastructure, thoroughfares and entryways to shopping centres.”
The council was successful in receiving funding through the NSW EPA Waste Less Recycle More initiative and a waste levy grant and went on to implement the first round of Banishing Bathurst Butts in 2021.
Once the council established a data set of levels of litter in the area, the environmental team began to implement its corrective methods.
“The data provided us with the capacity to understand the issue before improving landscape health and public amenity across the board,” says Thomas.
“We wanted to create behavioural change in our city. To do that we looked at education, enforcement and infrastructure strategies.”
He says the council took a “soft enforcement approach” to littering during the first half of the project.
“We didn’t want to go around penalising people for littering, we wanted to have meaningful discussions to change their behaviours,” he says.
“Research shows that penalising people can be effective, but not for everyone. So, we came up with the strategy to create educational content instead.”
These methods included communication through print, screen, radio and social media. Educational signage was delivered through posters, signs and advertisements.
The council also installed cigarette cylinder bins and handed out personalised butt bins during soft enforcement patrols.
“I think a lot of smokers think that they can’t put a cigarette butt in a normal bin because it might cause a fire,” says Thomas. “Having specific butt bins meant that some of those hesitations had been taken away.
“If council officers noticed someone littering, they would have a meaningful discussion about the consequences and then would offer them the pocket-sized butt bin.”
The NSW EPA provided a standard survey spreadsheet and framework for the council to use throughout the process. Thomas says the litter butt check process enabled the council to identify decreases in cigarette litter in key hot spots.
“Our environmental officers surveyed smokers on a number of important questions,” he says. “These included questions like what goes through your mind when you decide to litter, and do you know the implications of cigarette butts going into waterways?
“The majority of people will want to do the right thing, but there will always be that 10 per cent who don’t care.”
Thomas says the success of the project is a testament to applying all strategies across the board.
“If people didn’t notice the signage, they would notice the enforcement patrol, and if it wasn’t the enforcement patrol, it was the cigarette bins that stopped them from littering,” he says.
In 2022, the Bathurst Base Hospital senior management identified the hospital as a priority area for the campaign.
Thomas says initial site surveys calculated that up to 4000 butts were being littered on or around hospital grounds each week.
In partnership with the hospital and using a second round of funding from the NSW EPA, the council took on the project as a broader approach to combat littering trends throughout the LGA.
As per the Smoke Free Environment Act 2000 and New South Wales Health Policy, signage on hospital grounds could not be cigarette centric as it may infer that smoking was permitted on the premises, which contradicts policy and legislation.
Thomas says the hospital, New South Wales Health, NSW EPA and council representatives formed a design group to create graphics that met all objectives. From this partnership non cigarette centric graphics were designed and installed to establish social norming and education.
Another project constraint was the prohibition of butt bins on hospital grounds due to the same legislation. General waste bins with high exposure graphics were used to direct people to use those bins.
The project slashed litter by 85 per cent across hospital and suburban sites, a brilliant outcome, according to Thomas.
“The project resulted in a significant reduction in cigarette litter, and it formed a really good partnership between the council, hospital and other stakeholders.”
The council had already established a workforce to combat littering across the entire Bathurst LGA. Thomas says the success of the campaigns fuelled the council’s long term strategic direction around litter reduction.
“Council has been successful in securing another grant for a litter prevention strategy for the whole LGA,” he says.
“We are also looking forward to employing a staff member who solely works on litter prevention and implementing similar methodologies to reduce litter across the whole municipality.”
