This year you might notice signs around Geelong asking 'If you can, take your rubbish with you'.
This request is for everyone, tourists and residents. And here's why.
Geelong is beautiful
We all know Greater Geelong is a beautiful place to live, which is why our home receives more than six million visitors per year. It is up to everyone, whether they live here permanently or are only here for the day, to keep it that way .
Last year popular areas such as Eastern Beach received more than 10,000 visitors per day during the peak period. We are doing our best to help everyone do the right thing and dispose of their rubbish correctly by putting additional bins, skips, and daily rubbish collections in place, but due to the sheer volume of people and the rubbish they generate, it can be difficult to keep up.
This is why we are asking everyone, no matter where they live:
‘If you can, take your rubbish with you’ - even if the bin is not full.
Why should I take my rubbish with me?
There are a two main reasons.
- To prevent bins filling up
Not everyone will be able to take their rubbish with them. If you can though, and choose to do so, it leaves more room in the bin for those that are unable. This is important, and leads into the second reason. - To stop rubbish being stacked on and around bins
When bins are full, people begin to stack their rubbish on top of them, or at their base. Once this starts, more and more people notice, do the same, and the heap gets bigger, making it more noticeable, leading to more people heaping more rubbish, and so on. This is an example of people trying to do the right behaviour – put rubbish in the bin – but as they are unable, copying their peers in what they see as the next best thing. Most people who do this don’t think of themselves as litterers.
Stacked rubbish turns into litter
Unfortunately, despite good intentions, this rubbish ends up being blown into the surrounding land and water, or spread about by wildlife.
When this happens, what was heaped rubbish becomes litter. This sounds bad, but it gets worse.
The same way the more rubbish is heaped around a bin, the more people will heap rubbish around it, the more litter spread across an area, the more likely people feel it is okay to litter.
If you take your rubbish with you, others are likely to copy
The good news is, the cleaner an area, the more pressure people feel to keep it clean.
If they notice others taking part in a new rubbish related behaviour, taking it with them, they are likely to be more open to doing the same themselves.
Simply seeing others approach the bin, but decide not to use it and instead take their rubbish with them, means they are likely to do the same.
Okay, you’ve convinced me – but where should I take my rubbish instead?
What you do with your rubbish instead will depend on your particular circumstances, but here are a few suggestions to get you started:
- If you bought food or drink from a café or take away you could return the packaging to the business
- Take your rubbish back to your house or holiday accommodation and put it in the bin there.
- Remember, if your recycling bin is filling up you can take excess recycling to the Geelong or Drysdale Resource Recovery Centres.
- Eligible drink containers can be returned to CDS points.
Remember, every little bit helps
Even if you can’t take every single bit of rubbish with you, every little bit helps.
You might scrunch up a greasy food wrapper and put it in the nearest bin, but then take your empty drink container you have to your nearest CDSpoint.
You have still helped save space in the bins in the area you visited.