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LitterWatch for Wyndham Schools
FINAL REPORT
Approved: Mon 24th June 2013
LitterWatch
Wyndham LitterWatch was an environmental project initiated by Wyndham’s major environmental
organisations (Western Region Environment Centre, Werribee River Association, and Western Melbourne
Catchments Network) in partnership with the Crossroads Uniting Church, Melbourne Water and Wyndham
City Council.
Purpose
The purpose of the project was to raise community awareness of the
detrimental impacts of littering on our water ways and our general amenity
and environment. The project set out to involve the whole community
including business, government and educational organisations.
The LitterWatch program was formally launched by Tim Silverwood at the
Civic Centre on Tuesday April 30 2013. This was considered to be very
successful with 70 people in attendance and an entertaining program in a
very comfortable, modern venue. See photo opposite - The LitterWatch
monster meets Tim!
Raising awareness was achieved to a significant degree for participants and
observers as witnessed by two thousand five hundred people hearing
Tim Silverwood, including 14 out of 40 schools in Wyndham with 2400
students. See Tim in photo opposite at Heathdale Christian College on
Mon 29 Apr 2013. As well, an estimated 2-3000 observers saw
LitterWatch at Weerama and while interest from local newspapers was
low, local newspapers still carried three short articles and two photos,
which were distributed to most of Wyndham’s population. Some usage
was made of email networks and Facebook pages. Greater participant
numbers in LitterWatch activity at Weerama may be achieved by
adopting a more sales like approach to an activity and placing activities
in a more crowd friendly and accessible position. Other than partners,
no other businesses or organisations were involved. It is suggested that organisations might have
participated if offered incentives.
Focus
The primary focus was the prevention of littering, the opportunities for
reducing, reusing and recycling and on the need to clean up where littering
has occurred. This was highlighted by initiatives such as the ‘Take 3’
campaign with Tim Silverwood, the Walk against Waste to local politician’s
offices with numbers of passersby acknowledging the walk, Clean up
Wyndham day and school litter hot spots clean ups.
One initiative was to identify “litter hot spots” and to recruit nearby
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schools,scout groups, sporting clubs and other community organisations
to take responsibility for monitoring these hot spots and assisting with
clean ups wherever possible. These activities were carried out to a good
degree by a significant number of participants, and Clean Up Australia
Day (March 3rd) was used by some schools as their litter hot spot activity,
even though the event was early in the year. Despite the fact that some
schools that had Tim Silverwood visit did not complete or show evidence
of their clean up, a good number took part. No other organisation or
business assisted in this endeavour.
Other areas that were tackled included more effective education for the
prevention of littering, concerted action to reduce packaging and a
review of plastic bag and bottled water usage (major sources of litter and
waterways contamination) in Wyndham. The making of the LitterWatch
large bottle for displaying plastic bottles was a success. It was used at
Weerama and at Wyndham Clean up Day and was an excellent visual
icon, promoting these issues. It was felt that if LitterWatch enters
Weerama again, it should do so only after the festival organisers
accept suggestions of policy for the event, such as litter control, and
plastic reduction or recycling. A similar community-wide policy and
level of enforcement would also be of advantage.
Then a ‘Clean up Wyndham Day’ was held on Saturday May 4 2013
when only 20 participants took part, including kayaks and walkers.
Eight metres or over two tonnes of litter and rubbish was collected in
three hours, and the LitterWatch large bottle and signage was on
display. (See photos opposite) Data on litter collected at the Clean up
Wyndham Day is available, and it may be possible to improve on it by
making it comparable to data collected in other activities elsewhere. It
was felt that since Clean up Australia Day is accepted by the broader
community as a March event, then the Clean up Wyndham Day may
be better conducted in springtime.
The project’s educational program was a successful one, with over
2450 students from Year 3-9 seeing Tim Silverwood in 14 schools. The
program was marketed from December 2012 until March 2013 to
school email addresses and one mail out, but a number of teachers
did not know of the program. A student requested session on litter in
the Werribee river was held at Wyndham Central College (see photo
opposite) on Mon 13 May 2013. Transfer of information from
administration to teachers within schools was seen to be a problem.
Numbers could be improved by adding more attractive facets, such as following up the program next year
with initiatives such as taking the LitterWatch monster to school assemblies, and displaying the large bottle
at the schools.
As a further indicator of success, the Wyndham City Council awarded the 2013 Wyndham Community
Volunteer ‘Sustainability and Environment’ Award to a member of the group, in recognition of the project’s
contribution to sustainability and the environment. The LitterWatch project team is very thankful for the
financial and in-kind support of Melbourne Water and the City of Wyndham, and the support of the
Crossroads Uniting Church, Western Melbourne Catchments Network, Western Region Environment
Centre and Werribee River Association.
Thank you, LitterWatch team.
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REPORT ON SCHOOL VISITS
Education Kit
This image shows Page 1 of a 14 page education kit which was sent to all schools who took part.
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Data on students listening to Tim
Numbers of students listening to Tim Silverwood at schools visited
450
400
350
300
250
200
150
100
50
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Comments from Teachers
 Great session - thanks for organising him to come out. I have had many positive comments from
staff and students.
 Thanks all those involved in Bringing Tim Silverwood to our local school- very inspiring speaker and
brilliant human being, it was wonderful feeling to be part of a network event. Great work for our
planet!!!
 Thanks for organising Tim's visit – it was great. It was perfect timing for our work on persuasive
writing! After the talk – the students wrote on the topic "Should plastic bags be banned?" Amazing
writing and was great practice for Naplan.
 Great visit, very happy. Has helped our unit & to get kids involved. PS - we are creating letters re
deposit scheme to send soon.
 Thank you so much for this visit. It was thoroughly enjoyed by all and very educational.
Tim with Manorvale and St Andrews PS students
Tim speaking with Westgrove students
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Teacher Feedback Carranballac College Boardwalk Campus
Rate
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Low
Organisation by
LitterWatch
Suitability for
age range of
your students
Presentation of
powerpoint and
videos
Score for
presenter
Impact on
students
Impact on
school
Other
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
High
x
Comment
x
Perfect for 5/6 level.
x
Great images and a fantastic video on the
plastic bag
x
Engaging ,and passionate
x
Amazing- generated amazing discussions
x
At this stage it is slowly filtering to be high in
all levels
One Student Letter
The Grange P-12
Mr. Ryan Smith
Minister for Environment and Climate Change
Level 17,
8 Nicholson St,
Melbourne
3002
Dear Mr. Ryan Smith,
My name is Chelsea Collinder and as a citizen of Victoria, Werribee. I am deeply frustrated of all the
rubbish in our streets and parks. I demand that the Government should start Container Deposit Scheme or
we can get into a bigger problem that we have at the moment.
The first reason why we need a Container Deposit Scheme is that Victoria has quite a bit of an
environmental problem. 38% of our rubbish is plastic and ½ of this plastic rubbish is only used once! Much
of this rubbish and plastic are going into our oceans. There are over 3.5 million plastic, bottles and other
rubbish each year. Also, over 1,000 innocent sea creatures are dying every year!
The second reason why we need a CDS is that 2.5 billion bottles and cans are wasted per year. A CDS will
make these numbers drop rapidly. If you look at South Australia, their roads have no bottles or cans
because everyone recycles them to get a bit of money back!
My last reason is recycling is a good thing for the community, poor peoples, sports clubs and much more.
80% of Australians are supporting deposit schemes, so why not start a Container Deposit Scheme? Children
can earn pocket money. Parents can get money to put food on their table!
I strongly urge you to discuss this with your Liberal colleagues.
Yours faithfully,
C.
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Primary School Newsletter
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Hot Spots Wyndham 2013
Clean ups on Hot Spot Sites A & B
Tim Silverwood in
newspaper ‘Wyndham
Weekly’ P22 May 8
2013
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LitterWatch ‘Clean Up Wyndham Day’ Sun 4 May 2013 Riverbend Historical Park and Diversion Weir
Results of seven surveys by volunteers while engaged in litter collections.
180
160
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
Comments:
These surveys were conducted on land, while collections on the day were on land and in water at Riverbend Historical Park Werribee, and in the diversion weir pool above
the diversion weir to 500 metres upstream. Tallies of individual items can be seen by reading the left axis of the graph. The total of plastics which were collected in these
seven surveys was 387 out of a total 1060, or 37%. Plastics (in red in the diagram above) were defined as Plastic Bag, Plastic Bottle, Plastic Miscellaneous, Polystyrene, and
Snack Wrappers or Packets. Cigarette butts may be underrepresented as surveyors said that it was difficult to count them as they were difficult to see in grass and amongst
other rubbish or in water of course. Observations of litter collected in the water showed that nearly all items were afloat, or capable of floating when water levels are
higher, and were mainly plastic as described in graph. In excess of eight cubic metres of rubbish was collected. The activity was part of the LitterWatch program.