Tackling litter problem

By Dion Teasdale
MARGARET Baker and the team of volunteers at the Yarra Valley Visitor Information Centre are fed up with picking up other people’s rubbish.
Ms Baker, the centre coordinator, said volunteers are forced to pick up alcohol bottles and cans, cigarette boxes and fast food packaging dumped around the centre on weekends.
“When the volunteers turn up in the morning the first thing that they have to do is clean up all the litter left along the street and out the front of the centre,” she said.
“We don’t believe it is our responsibility, but we can’t just leave it there. We don’t want the first thing visitors see when they arrive in town is a pile of rubbish.”
Ms Baker said weekends during the warmer months were the worst with staff often collecting large boxes of litter each morning.
“A lot of people come here overnight and have mini-parties on our nature strip and they leave all their rubbish behind,” she said.
“Other people moving between nearby businesses along Harker Street also leave their rubbish.”
Ms Baker said she would like rubbish bins installed outside the information centre.
“Of course you can’t make people use the bins, but at least if they were there we’d have more chance of combating the problem,” she said.
Garry Christie, manager of the Terminus Hotel, said he supported Ms Baker’s call for bins to be installed in the area.
“A lot of our patrons do move between the hotel and the nearby service station and there is nowhere for people to discard their rubbish, so they turf it,” he said.
Ms Christie said the hotel employed a cleaner to pick up rubbish at 6am every morning, but that rubbish was being left by people other than hotel patrons.
“We’re in the process of negotiating with the Shire of Yarra Ranges to see if we can get some litter bins to help us deal with this problem,” he said.
Sergeant Tony Van Gorp, from Healesville police station – which is also located on Harker Street – said bins would be a sensible idea.
“It is irritating for people to dump rubbish on the ground. Litter along the street has been an ongoing problem, including out the front of the police station, which is unsightly,” he said.
“Bins in the vicinity of the visitor information centre would certainly help alleviate the problem.”
James Martin, the shire’s manager of community relations, said the shire would assess the litter problem.
“We’ll get our garbage contractor to monitor the area,” he said.
“We’ll also make contact with the visitor information centre and some of the other businesses and tenants along the street and see what can be done.”