Port Phillip Baykeeper » marine litter

A fresh approach to ciggie litter

BayKeeper — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 10:50:31 +0000

Cigarette butts accounted for 37% of litter items removed from City of Port Phillip beaches on Clean Up Australia Day 2011 by the Port Phillip Clean Beaches Coalition. Apart from the fact that ciggie filters don’t biodegrade and are laced with a range of toxic substances, these little suckers are so small they scoot straight through most litter traps!

In search of a positive solution, Baykeeper has teamed with Ormond College (Melbourne Uni) students and the City of Port Phillip’s Community Pulse program to better understand where the butts come from. The team has conducted 4, fortnightly surveys so far, collecting butts from a 500m section of Blessington Street, St Kilda; the car park at St Kilda Marina Reserve; and, the 120m St Kilda South Beach.

Butts on the street sail away when it rains!

A total of 11,857 butts have been collected. The team has recorded where each butt was found. As there has been relatively low rainfall over the survey period, only around 10% have been found on the beach. 8% were in the Marina Reserve carpark; 35% in front of businesses and the rest near residences and parks.

Understanding where the hotspots are provides a basis for positive solutions to the issue. The next steps include talking to local government, residents, traders and smokers to explore how they can be part of the solution. Baykeeper welcomes anyone interested in joining the butt safari team, or forming their own team to survey other areas.

No butts about it!

BayKeeper — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 13:05:28 +0000

The City of Port Phillip has taken a bold step to change the popular belief that Bay beaches are just dirty big ashtrays. They’re the first municipality on Port Phillip Bay to ban cigarette smoking and glass on beaches. The new regulations take effect on December 1, 2010.

Cigarette butts were the most common litter item recorded in Baykeeper litter surveys conducted in March & April this year in the City of Port Phillip. Litter (and data) was collected from a range of sites: from the high tide line, middle of the beach, back of the beach, adjacent parkland, and a waterway flowing to the Bay. Butts were common in all areas.

Your butts look big!

The Elwood Canal survey was conducted on a 20m stretch of Canal bank, just over 1 km from the coast. The high number of butts (125) at this location confirms the role of stormwater system in flushing butts from inland streets to the Bay. No doubt some will use this fact to grizzle about the smoking on beaches ban. But perhaps it’s a conversation we have to have for people (particularly children) to decide that, for so many reasons, cigarettes are a just not worth it.

Baykeeeper plans repeat surveys at the same locations in March-April 2011. Anyone willing to help will be very welcome.

Carmel Wallace: marine messenger

BayKeeper — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 05:04:43 +0000

Artists like Carmel Wallace are rarer than a message in a bottle on the shoreline! Port Phillip EcoCentre was honoured to host Carmel as Artist-in-Residence in July 2008. In just 4 weeks she collected an extraordinary array of litter from beaches in the Bay and the Yarra Bank below Westgate Bridge; and assembled them into a beautiful, but scary, wall-hanging called ‘An Octopus’s Garden’.

Carmel not only donated her time to create the work, She was happy to share her knowledge of the scourge of marine litter with EcoCentre visitors. ‘An Octopus’s Garden’ has remained a prized feature of the EcoCentre ever since; and was the centrepiece of the Coast Action Coastcare display at the 2010 Sustainable Living Festival. Thankyou Carmel for all you do!

Carmel’s latest exhibition, ‘Colony’ opens at ‘Gallery 101′ at 101 Collins Street, Melbourne at 6pm on Thursday February 25, 2010. RSVP to arts@gallery101.com.au