Imagine a house guest who’s just headed home but left behind their toenail clippings scattered through your living room.
It’s a similar feeling with cable ties turning up all over Albert Park as the GP pack down slowly continues. Except that cable ties are so much worse than toenail clippings.
They aren’t just ugly or annoying. They’re an overlooked part of the plastic litter scourge threatening wildlife and polluting the park forever.
“Black cable ties should be banned,” says Neil ‘Captain Trash’ Blake, Port Phillip Baykeeper.
“They’re not recyclable nor biodegradable” he explains. “They become brittle and break up into microplastics If left exposed to sunlight.”
Thousands of snipped and dropped cable ties have been left behind, on the roads, pathways and grassed areas of Albert Park.
They’d been used all over the site, but mostly for signage and fencing. At least 6 were on each perimeter fence panel, to secure kilometres of black sheeting and razor wire around the boundary.
Local advocacy group, Lake ALIVE! has collected a 130L tub of cable ties. That’s on top of snippets of razor wire, barbed wire, and metal cable ties that could badly hurt dogs’ feet. And strips of twine or plastic that are often found in bird nests.
Just four park recreational users picked up the disturbing cable tie collection on separate regular walks in the first two weeks after the park reopened. They started picking them up straight away this year, fed up with usually finding them for months after the GP leaves town.
One person counted 79 ties in 30-metres in Red Gum Triangle at the Fitzroy Street end of the park. Another found 250 of them in a 50-metre stretch on Albert Road in South Melbourne.
“If the Grand Prix Corporation tries to claim, ‘Oh, we’d just pick them up later’, I don’t buy it at all,” said Annabelle Bueman, a Lake ALIVE! co-founder.
“Most of these cable ties quickly blend in with the ground. Even if they do a rubbish sweep several weeks afterwards, that’s too much time for them to be blown or washed elsewhere.”
Cable-ties are defined as litter by the Australian Litter Measure, the new national system for tracking rubbish trends. But they aren’t included in Victoria’s banned single use plastics. Nor does the EPA recognise them as industrial or commercial pollution.
In its annual report, the AGPC says it recognises the important role it has to play in making ‘impactful changes with long-term, positive outcomes for the environment’.
Lake ALIVE! sees the cable tie curse at Albert Park as an opportunity to take the lead. The group has sent a written plea to the Grand Prix Corporation and the State Government.
“AGPC, you list waste reduction as one of your three goals. If you can collect coffee grounds, you must collect cable ties too.
“Your fencing contractor gets millions of dollars for this job, while Parks Victoria and park users are left to clean up the mess,” their submission urged.
Kelly Brennan is the convenor of Lake ALIVE! an advocacy group for recreational park users and wildlife at Albert Park.
