Bayside Roads Litter Patrol was founded and is led by Derek Jones and is supported by Bayside City Council. The group joined NHW Bayside in 2023. Currently there are some 40 volunteers in the group, and we welcome new members.
We “patrol” the City of Bayside from Charman Road Beaumaris to Glenhuntly Road Elwood, and from the Nepean Highway to St Kilda Street and Beach Road. There are some fifty designated roadside litter patrol routes covering open spaces and roadside litter hot spots in Bayside and including seven railway stations.
Each litter patrol is two to three kilometers in length which is usually patrolled at least twice each month. Currently, there are about forty of these routes being patrolled, plus another fifteen short routes around the Royal Melbourne, Victoria and Sandringham Golf course side-road frontages, so that’s about 100 kilometers, or almost half of the Bayside’s streets and public space areas being regularly cleared of litter.
The patrols are centred around golf courses, public parks and gardens, sports grounds, bushland reserves and public infrastructure, including car parks, community centres, schools, libraries and main roads etc.
Meticulous removal of open space and public infrastructure litter is the main task, with bottles, cans, coffee cups, fast food and supermarket packaging, sweets wrappers, tissues, plastic, cigarette butts and packets the main targets for collection as well as hard rubbish such as household and industrial items.
Basically, each of the team members do their patrols independently, when it suits them, and when it is needed, especially if there is a major litter attack or it’s in a high-level litter area, such as a railway station/bus stop/major or minor activity precinct.
There are also a number of ‘hot spot’ streets that are monitored weekly such as Tulip Street Sandringham, Cheltenham Road Black Rock, Talinga Road near the Bayside Council transfer station, Graham Road Highett and Martin Street Gardenvale, all of which are magnets for litter vandals dumping hard rubbish, as well as Nepean Highway, Hampton Street, South Road and Bluff Road, which they patrol from Black Rock Village to South Road.
The shopping precincts presently covered include Gardenvale, Hampton, Black Rock Village, Seaview Beaumaris and Beaumaris Concourse which are patrolled regularly, but all other shopping strips in the City of Bayside do need regular litter patrols.
Railway stations, bus terminals and their environs (Major Activity Centres) are serious litter hotspots due to the high volume of people using them and so Sandringham, Middle Brighton, North Brighton, Gardenvale, Cheltenham Hampton and Brighton Beach are either being patrolled or under the radar.