Littering is a major issue for the Auckland region. It makes our streets and beautiful environment look bad, costs ratepayers millions of dollars every year and pollutes waterways.

Be a Tidy Kiwi, an initiative of the region’s councils, is running a three year campaign to get you to take personal responsibility for littering in the region.

We want you, your family and friends to pledge to Be Tidy Kiwis as part of the “Come on, in the bin mate” campaign. It’s as simple as making sure you put all your rubbish in the bin and encouraging others to do the same.

When developing the campaign we found that some of the things that influence people to litter are:

• Cultural and social attitudes
• Infrastructure deficiencies
• The ‘rubbish attracts rubbish’ effect
• Excessive packaging
• A lack of enforcement.

Over the next three years, the Be a Tidy Kiwi campaign aims to:

• Get people to accept that littering is important and serious
• Make it clear that even though someone may clean up your litter, the cost of littering is to the community
• Identify ways to motivate people who are lazy or cannot be bothered to dispose of their waste correctly
• Clarify what constitutes litter, highlighting food waste and cigarette butts
• Maximise use of litter bins by designing them well
• Incorporate urban design principles when developing or regenerating public places
• Consider enforcement approaches as part of the implementation plan
• Target special initiatives such as cigarette butt litterers, this group of people have significantly different behaviour to others observed
• Target Initiatives that focus at ‘transition’ points, e.g. when getting on buses
• Stress that it is the small, individual pieces of litter that accumulate to cause the litter problem.

Keep an eye out for regional and local initiatives to get people to Be Tidy Kiwis.