Whatever happened to: “Keep Australia Beautiful”?

Our roads look like dump sites these days, despite the billions of dollars in registration fees paid by car owners*.

Addressing:

Steve Dimopoulos, Minister for Environment
Joss Crawford, Interim EPA CEO
Jeroen Weimar, Secretary of the Department of Transport

Since COVID, roadside litter along regional and suburban roads and freeways of Victoria has significantly increased, reaching unacceptable levels!

Specific problem areas include sections of the roads on Mornington Peninsula, Frankston-Dandenong Road, M11, M3, C787, C785 and other freeways around Melbourne, along with the regional Victoria. 

This litter is not only a major traffic and life-threatening hazard, a main drain blockage issue, but also a severe environmental danger, exacerbated by weather conditions.

Roadside litter as micro- and nano-plastics inevitably ends up in our waterways, soil, and bush, poisoning our animals and crops, wildlife and plants**. Besides the above littering increases the greenhouse effect and forms a disheartening aesthetic impact on our environment, witnessed by visitors, tourists and kids as a low behavioral standard in Victoria.

Since May 2022, numerous applications to various government authorities have been lodged with no significant results.

Ministry for Environment / EPA / VicRoads must control and prevent roadside litter!

1.     Take immediate action to clean and decontaminate the roadsides of Greater Melbourne. Increase the frequency of roadside cleaning from 1-3 times a year to “as needed”. Cleaning should precede any other roadside works. Digging rubbish into the soil, hiding it in the bush or mowing it into micro-particles should be strictly penalised.

2.     Provide transparency about the cleaning subcontractors. Involve taxpayers/end-users, the community and local councils in constant monitoring and evaluating subcontractor performance. Ensure there is immediate action for poor performance, including penalties or redoing the cleaning job to acceptable standards. Change the payment for subcontractors from action-based to results-based (decontaminated roadsides, instead of reporting “job done”). 

3.     Restore an emergency littering reporting line response of VicRoads (refer to the Litter Watch https://www.litterwatchvictoria.org.au/ and Litter Stopper https://www.litterstopper.com/

Assign responsible VicRoads staff to deal with litter clearance requests based on the reporting and provide their working contact details so that follow-up action can be taken. 

4.     Install road signs advocating for litter prevention (like “Lend a paw – bin your litter” in UK ***) and specifying fines' levels. Introduce litter cameras or equivalent along main roads. The revenue from fines, given current litter levels, would provide a significant and ongoing source of budget income.

Let's unite to create safe driving conditions as well as a clean environment for ourselves, our wildlife, and future generations!

If you would like to sign this petition as a community group, NGO, or any other grassroots organization, or if you are a journalist interested in investigating this issue, please contact us at acfmornington@gmail.com.

Everyone is welcome to join us at

https://www.acf.org.au/acf_community_mornington

Photo credit CalSTA

*Australia's Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics (BITRE) showing more than 5.514 million motor vehicles (Victoria, July, 2024).

** Karimi, K., Arseshir, F., “The Issues of Roadside Litter: A Review Paper”, including current litter abatement strategies, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Delaware, Newark, USA, December, 2021. (https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation?paperid=113864

***National Highways and RSPCA Campaign, UK, 2024 (https://nationalhighways.co.uk/article/road-users-implored-to-stop-littering-as-deadly-impact-on-wildlife-is-revealed/