Ninety-five percent of litter, including plastics, found on Melbourne’s beaches originates from our catchments. Litter discarded in streets is carried into waterways via the stormwater system, ultimately contaminating both land and water environments. This not only diminishes aesthetic appeal but also impacts water quality and endangers aquatic life.
For more effective management of litter impacts, it's essential to comprehend the primary types, sources, and quantities of litter entering waterways, along with their relative impacts. Achieving this requires access to relevant and robust data, enabling a comprehensive analysis of the nature and sources of litter and providing insight into how litter changes temporally and in response to management interventions.
Over the past five years, RMIT University and Melbourne Water have partnered to collect such data within waterways across the Greater Melbourne Area, aiming to improve litter management and mitigation. As part of this, we've implemented monitoring across 6 sub-catchments collecting data on litter types and quantities, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Additionally, we've developed a catchment rating tool to track temporal and spatial changes in litter conditions. This presentation will outline the approach to developing the monitoring program, discuss the learnings, and share outcomes from the initial two years of monitoring.