Keeping Dunedin Beautiful

Dunedin (10 December 2014) – An awareness day about what it takes to keep Dunedin streets clean and what the public can do to help is being held in the Octagon on Wednesday 17 December.

The DCC in partnership with Keep Dunedin Beautiful and Fulton Hogan, the city’s rubbish collection contractors, are running the event from 10am.

“We want to raise awareness in the city of how much effort goes into keeping our streets clean, how much litter there actually is and what the public can do to help our city clean,” says DCC Roading Maintenance Engineer, Peter Standring.

Over a 1000kms of roads are swept clean throughout Dunedin. To demonstrate how these streets are cleaned Fulton Hogan will have their sweeper and suction trucks going around the Octagon on Wednesday.

“Often people are sleeping when the streets are being cleaned so they don’t see what is going on behind the scenes and the amount of rubbish collected because people are littering,” says Mr Standring.

“Although we won the Keep New Zealand Beautiful, Beautiful Towns & Cities Award there is still a long way to go in keeping our streets clean. And there is more we can all be doing to help out.”

At the event there will be education about the build-up of rubbish during a single day and how even a small amount of litter, such as chewing gum or cigarette butts, contributes to a bigger mess around the city.

“A significant number of cigarette butts are picked up when the streets are cleaned. We want people to realise a little more about how small pieces of litter contribute to the bigger problems of rubbish and how they affect the environment,” says Mr Standring.

The DCC Solid Waste, Roading and Parks teams will be giving demonstrations on the day and the passing public are invited to put their suggestions on how to keep the CBD clean on a pin board.

“We are keen to hear ideas from the public about how we can better improve the cleanliness of our city and if we are all committed to this it means we can improve the look and feel of Dunedin,” says Mr Standring.

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