Stormwater Insights A unique collaboration

In 2019, Heidi brought together councils, NGOs and other groups in a first-of-its-kind citizen science project to look at sources of plastic pollution in the Port Phillip Bay area in Victoria.

Doug Yardley, business development manager – stormwater solutions, of Pipe Management Australia (PMA), was involved in the project from the start.

“We were down helping the Yarra Riverkeeper Association looking at how to stop pollution. It was shocking to see the amount of rubbish ending up in the river,” Doug said.

“One of the first things we did was use a vacuum system to pull rubbish out of the river. This caught the public’s attention, including coverage on the ABC’s War on Waste. Next, we talked about installing litter traps, which we could monitor to develop maps of where the pollution is coming from.”

From here, the ‘Let’s Strain the Drains’ project was born. Tangaroa Blue Foundation and PMA applied for funding from the Victorian Government, which allowed them to install ‘Drain Buddies’, a modular type of litter basket, throughout the Port Phillip Bay area.

The initiative was an unusual feat of collaboration, involving community volunteers, not-for-profit organisations, local governments, state government, industry and university researchers.

The project was also unique in terms of the kind of data it collected and the range of ways this data could be used.

“We installed litter baskets in different land use types to find out what kinds of plastic pollution were coming from which areas,” said Heidi. “This was a truly unique approach. It had never been done before”.

How data was collected

PMA worked with six councils in the Port Phillip Bay area to install litter baskets in the stormwater infrastructure. These assets were serviced over 12 months between October 2019 and October 2020.

Five litter baskets were placed in each of four different land-use types that typically generate the highest concentrations of litter:

• central business districts (CBDs)

• industrial precincts

• shopping centres

• public transport terminals.