The ‘Snaptember’ promotion by the Snap Send Solve anti-littering app encouraged residents to help clean-up their community by reporting any issues they saw with dumped rubbish, graffiti, overgrown vegetation and abandoned shopping trolleys.
It proved popular as the 3237 notifications received via the app by Christchurch City Council were up by 20 per cent from the same month last year (2668).
However, reports of litter from other sources including phone and email did not see any increase.
Starting in the first week of September, a 76 per cent increase in litter reports was recorded by council staff.
The following week the emphasis was on graffiti and this resulted in a 153 per cent increase in reports, while the third week had a massive 1600 per cent increase in notifications concerning overgrown vegetation.
However, as only one overgrown vegetation incident was reported in 2020, the 17 cases reported that week resulted in the 1600 per cent increase.
The fourth and final week of the ‘Snaptember’ promotion asked people to report abandoned shopping trolleys dumped in their communities.
City council head of citizen and customer services Sarah Numan said this particular problem was already covered by an existing agreement with all the main trolley providers – Countdown, New World, Four Square, Fresh Choice, The Warehouse and K-Mart.
“They are signed up to Snap Send Solve so they get notified directly if the app receives a report that one of their shopping trolleys has been dumped so they can then take steps to retrieve it,’’ she said.
Numan said as a result of the promotion staff and contractors were now working to address the many issues reported.
- Download, or find out more about, the Snap Send Solve app here.
