Get in touch

Let’s get litterate

The Hills Shire

The Hills Shire Council is 386.3 km² in the north of Sydney. The Hawkesbury River forms a part of its north-western border.

Visit council website

Part of the Lane Cove River & Parramatta River catchments.

Blacktown Cumberland Canada Bay Inner West Strathfield Parramatta The Hills Shire Hornsby Shire Ku-ring-gai Willoughby Mosman Lane Cove Sydney North Sydney Burwood Woollahra Waverley Ryde Canterbury Bankstown Northern Beaches Parramatta River Catchment Lane Cove River Catchment Middle Harbour Catchment Port Jackson Catchment

The Hills Shire

Community

The Hills Shire estimated resident population for 2020 is 183,791, with a population density of 475.8 persons/km². In 2016, 35.1% of people in the Hills Shire were born overseas.

The Hills Shire

Litter policy

The Provision of ‘services, infrastructure, information and education that facilitate resource recovery and encourage commercial and residential waste minimisation’ is one of the Council’s strategic actions in the 2020-21 Annual Report.
This entails:

  • delivering safe, efficient, and cost-effective waste, recycling, garden organics and clean up services
  • providing innovative education and communication programs that encourage community behaviour change to conserve resources and reduce waste generation
  • developing and implementing a Resource Recovery Strategy
  • investigating innovative waste strategies.

The Council is currently having consultations with the community to inform the development of a waste strategy.

The Council supports the Western Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils (WSROC) Regional Waste Strategy.

The Council is a member of the Western Sydney Regional Illegal Dumping (RID) Squad that has been targeting illegal dumping across the growing Western Sydney region.

Projects

Using NSW EPA Waste Less, Recycle More funding from the waste levy, the Council hosts a variety of free waste and recycling education workshops. During 2020-2021, 398 programs, promotional communications and composting and worm farming units were delivered. The programs and promotional communications ranged from school education events to community education by promoting Plastic Free July and Council’s Single Use Plastics Campaign. The programs are designed to positively influence behaviours and values towards waste avoidance, re-use and recycling and composting and worm farming. Some of these workshops are available in Mandarin and Cantonese to maximise engagement from the Chinese-speaking community in the Hills Shire.

The Council worked with business manager, Mulpha Norwest Pty Ltd., in 2016-17 to clean up litter daily around Norwest Lake. The program reduced the volume of rubbish by 98% and 83% in two heavily littered areas. Key elements of the program:

  • installation of 12 new bins with signage around Norwest Lake
  • installation of three ‘Hey Tosser!” banners on the lake’s perimeter fence
  • engagement of local food businesses around the lake to display Hey Tosser! posters in their shop windows
  • increase of regular ranger patrols around the lake.

Council has developed a list of guidelines to look at practical ways to phase out single- use plastics that are most often littered – including water bottles, coffee cups and lids, straws, foodware, (cups, plates and cutlery), takeaway containers, balloons and plastic bags – at Council events.