Butt Free Australia

City-based campaigns focus on large areas. They involve highly varied littering behaviours, differing audiences and activities, and compete in busy spaces for attention. Campaigns therefore either adopt a tight focus on hotspots – locations where the most butt littering is occurring - or are delivered more broadly in a highly engaging way through advertising and media.

Case Study – Butt FREE City 2010 National Report.

Beach projects convey a strong message about protecting the environment.  Engagement and measurement of campaign effectiveness can be challenging as the audience is neither regular nor easy to engage. Infrastructure requires a focus on permanent butt bins with signage and personal ashtrays for engaging beach goers.

Business-based projects require liaison with property managers and business owners to ensure that not only is adequate infrastructure provided, serviced and well signed but that staff are engaged to lead by example.

Event projects, such as an outdoor festival in a park or a street fair, have audiences that are highly transient and active. The emphasis in this context is on infrastructure that is visible and accessible, rather than a focus on encouraging behaviour over time through education and awareness.

Highways prove challenging due to vast areas and fast moving audiences. Engagement can be at areas where vehicles stop, such as service areas or through roadside signage or radio advertising. Partners might be road transport authorities responsible for roads, council groups and business owners.

In a natural environment context such as rivers, bays and national parks, projects convey a strong message about protecting the environment. Audiences are highly transient and how to best engage them will vary greatly depending on the areas. Diverse partnerships will be required and may often include tourism operators.

Engaging smokers while eating outdoors – at a restaurant, cafe or hotel – involves a captive audience easily engaged using table-top education materials and infrastructure, such as windproof ashtrays. Outdoor dining projects require good partnerships with eating establishments and creative, unobtrusive, hard wearing materials.

Audiences at a pub or club may be on footpath or similar area or on-site in a designated outdoor area as they socialise, drink and relax. Messages need to be highly engaging, even entertaining, to compete with other signage and activity in this space.

Streets, footpaths, malls & roads are the focus of this context. The audiences here tend to be regular visitors, making any changes in littering behaviour easier to measure. Businesses from diverse sectors together with local government will be the main partners. They are important for support with communication and infrastructure, along with media and community groups.

Here the focus is on littering at Centre entrances, car parks and loading docks on privately owned property. Centre management and business owners are key partners. The audience is captive and tends to visit regularly and includes staff, suppliers and shoppers. Attention to infrastructure, signage and face-to-face education are particularly important.

Destinations such as popular townships, gateways to natural environments and iconic regions are the focus of this context. Audiences are highly transient and timing of projects is critical. Measurement of changes in behaviour is difficult. In the high season large numbers of visitors provide a great opportunity to educate many in a short time. Infrastructure is key in this context, as are wide and varied partnerships with Council, business, tour operators, hotels and transport.

Littering often occurs around transport facilities – where people are waiting at a bus stop or going to or from a station, for example. Transport projects involve a large, highly active and captive audience that is difficult to engage. Infrastructure considerations require liaison with transport companies and local councils, and in some instances state governments.

Venues such as sporting grounds and entertainment venues have transient audiences highly focused on what is happening. Projects can only engage with them over a short period of time, and the messages and infrastructure must be visible and accessible.