National litter-buster Keep Australia Beautiful is calling on home owners and businesses in Gosford to show their support for Graffiti Free Week held from Monday, March 16, to Sunday, March 22.
Gosford was identified as the sixth top graffi ti hotspot in NSW in 2013, with 263 incidents. With a need to improve such statistics, Keep Australia Beautiful encourages people to help wipe out graffi ti by cleaning off the visual litter as soon as it appears. Keep Australia Beautiful CEO Mr Peter McLean said research revealed graffi ti vandals or taggers enjoyed seeing their handiwork on display and that immediate removal prevented copycat offences and vandals from seeing the fruits of their labour. Mr McLean is encouraging home owners and businesses to report visual litter to the police or local council, or clean it off wherever possible, during Graffi ti Free Week. “The estimated cost of graffi ti and other forms of vandalism to the Australian community is a massive $2.7 billion a year, making visual litter the new scourge in our fi ght against litter bugs,” said Mr McLean. Mr McLean said Keep Australia Beautiful had started tracking the prevalence of graffi ti in its annual National Litter Index research. “This means that for the fi rst time we’ll be able to record graffi ti on a national and state by state level which will reveal where the hot spots are located and serve as a trend indicator for future policy decisions,” said Mr McLean. “This is a concerted, combined effort to raise awareness of the cost and visual pollution of graffi ti,” said Mr McLean.
Media release,
15 Mar 2015
Lachlan Clark,
Sequel Communications