Transcript: Esther Wagner: [00:00:01] Litter actually encourages crime. They have done research and found that littered areas are more likely to be to have criminal activity because of the litter. The litter is announcing to any criminal that they can act with impunity and no one will react because if no one's picking up that litter, then no one cares. Adam Stoker: [00:00:19] Hello, everyone and welcome to another episode of the Destination Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Stoker. We are here live in Hilton Head, South Carolina at the South Carolina Tourism Conference. And it's been a really fun event so far and I was able to grab Esther Wagner and I'm really excited that you're here. You are with a unique organization. You're speaking tomorrow. So I wanted to get you here to talk a little bit about that. But tell me about your organization and your role within the organization. Esther Wagner: [00:00:47] We are a unique organization. We are Palmetto Pride. We are South Carolina's litter prevention organization and there's really not anything else like us in the United States. Nonprofit, 501 C(3) nonprofit. And our goal is to prevent litter. Adam Stoker: [00:01:02] Great. And it's funny because as you were sitting here kind of telling me a little bit about your organization, the light bulb went off for me that like this is bigger than South Carolina, right? There's a lot of organizations and destinations that might benefit from the things that you talk about. So, from a philosophical standpoint, I know that you said your goal is to decrease litter, right? But you also were telling me that you do a little bit more than that as well. So maybe in a broader sense, what's the mission of your organization? Esther Wagner: [00:01:31] Well, our mission is to change littering behavior. If all we're going to do is pick up litter, that's all we're ever going to do. People have been picking up litter I mean, Keep America Beautiful was established in 1953, I think. People have been picking up litter by the millions of pounds since then and we still have a litter problem. So we have to change the behavior and make people more aware of how litter happens and what they're doing to create litter. And then we can change that behavior instead of continuing to just do the same things. Adam Stoker: [00:02:08] Great. So, tell me about your partnership with tourism in South Carolina because obviously there's a lot of different ways that your organization can work with a destination marketing organization and they've got you speaking tomorrow. So what I'd love to have you do maybe is talk about how your partnership with destination organizations came about and then maybe a preview of what you'll be talking about tomorrow. Esther Wagner: [00:02:32] Yes. So, of course, litter prevention is very important for tourism. I mean, think about it. If you go to a hotel and you walk in and it's dirty and gross, are you going to stay there or are you going to go back? You may stay there that time, but you're not going to go back to it. Adam Stoker: [00:02:44] Never. Esther Wagner: [00:02:44] That’ll be the last time. And tourism is South Carolina's number one business. And we have to keep our beaches clean, our beautiful outdoor environments clean where people aren't going to want to come. And we have some of the most amazing environments in the world really. I mean, the Ace Basin and the Jocassee Gorges, all of our beaches, you can't get more beautiful than South Carolina, you just can't. Adam Stoker: [00:03:10] Absolutely. Esther Wagner: [00:03:10] And so we partner with them because we want to, they know that litter prevention is key to their business and they want us to be here for that. And so tomorrow I'm going to be actually doing a training seminar on what we offer. We offer free training in South Carolina on crime prevention through environmental design. It's also called in Europe, they call it Safer by Design. And I kind of like that better because it's not just about crime prevention, it's about all kinds of safety. Adam Stoker: [00:03:40] Yeah, I think that's really interesting and you talked about crime prevention by environmental design. I want you to expound on that a little bit because how can we through environmental design actually impact crime levels? Esther Wagner: [00:03:52] So the typical types of crime prevention that we use, things like fences and especially the concertina wire where it looks like it looks like a prison and the CCTV cameras. When you think about that, that actually can prevent people from using the space. If you've got your parks closed up, locked up, as soon as six o'clock hits, then who's going to be using that park? They can't use it. People can't use it after they get off work, they can't take their kids there. If you've got CCTV cameras everywhere, people feel like that Big Brother is watching them. It can actually give the impression that it is a high-crime area. The more cameras you have, the higher the opinion is that this place is a high crime area and people don't want to be where they think there's a lot of crime. They're going to not use that space because of it. So crime prevention through environmental design is teaching us ways that we can make our environment safer while encouraging the natural use of the environment. But basically telling anybody who's going to use it improperly, this isn't the place for you. That behavior is not welcome here. Adam Stoker: [00:05:02] Interesting. So I speak with a lot of destination organizations and I think the number one thing that, that a lot of people that are listening might be thinking right now is, well, this all sounds well and good. But the municipality controls crime prevention, the municipality controls environmental design, the municipality controls litter regulation, right? And so how can the destination make sure that they're even a part of the conversation that allows you or someone like you to get involved and maybe help solve this problem because it absolutely impacts tourism? Esther Wagner: [00:05:36] Well, first of all, the municipality doesn't control your personal property. You do. You can apply these principles on at your home, at your business. But we also, that's one of the things we do. We go out and try to get the municipalities on board with this program so that they will make their communities a safer place. So we encourage them to come to our training, especially get their city managers, county managers, their codes enforcement people, their law enforcement. Our training qualifies for credit from the Criminal Justice Academy. It also qualifies for continuing education credits for city and community planners. So also architects, landscape architects, we've done everything we can to make sure that it's valuable to the people who we want to take the class. It's very valuable for them to take it. Adam Stoker: [00:06:30] So this is really important then. In your kind of ideal scenario, when you're working with a destination, you've got the right stakeholders at the table taking the training at the same time so that everybody's on the same page about the outcome of the training and the implementation of the principles that you teach. Correct? Esther Wagner: [00:06:47] Yes. And the interesting thing is that when I have, especially planners and law enforcement, law enforcement more than anybody, I'll talk to them about some of these concepts and they've never heard them before. Nobody's talked to them. Even things like SAT questions. Criminals have SAT questions to determine where they're going to work. Surveillance. S can I be seen, A availability. Can I get in and out? And T that’s territoriality. Does anyone care what happens here? So criminals want the answers to be, no, no one cares what happens. I can get in, in and out easily. No one's taking responsibility for this location. But we want, we have the same SAT questions. We want different answers. We want to know that if something happens to us on that site, that someone will react and we also want to be able to see clearly around the site enough to know. Hey, there's something over there. There's a group of young men over there coming this way. Are they just out going to the basketball court or are they getting ready to create trouble? We want to be able to see that in time to react to it. Adam Stoker: [00:07:57] So you want the stakeholders that are a part of the process. Like we talked about the police and we talked about the city manager and the other people that might be part of the process. We want them to look at the high crime areas within the destination and ask the SAT questions ahead of time so that we're proactively solving the problem and not just waiting for something bad to happen and then we've got a major issue to do that. Esther Wagner: [00:08:21] And this is, I've talked for a while now and not told you the concepts accepted yet. It's very simple. Basically, there are four strategies, territoriality or territorial control. You want to make it clear every space in your community needs to be defended by someone. Doesn't have to be their legal– I don't have to own my park, but I'm going to take responsibility for it and I'm going to react if there's inappropriate behavior there. So, territoriality is the major one. And the other three could be sort of subcategories under that. Natural access control. We want to make it clear where people are supposed to be on the site and where they're not supposed to be on the site, guide them through the space. We don't want big signs that say you're not supposed to be here. We want it to be very natural. You can use things like even ground cover the landscaping that you use. The third strategy is natural surveillance. We want to be able to see clearly around the site. We don't want places for people to hide. A lot of shrubbery now is a great place for people to hide and they can then break into your house, hiding behind your shrubbery, get plenty of time to break into your home. So that's the fourth one, natural surveillance or the third one natural surveillance. And then the fourth one is why we're involved with it, which is maintenance and management. You want to make sure that the site looks like someone's taking care of it. If you've got a littered environment, it's clear that no one cares. And so if you get on board with our [Inaudible 00:09:46] strategies and do the [Inaudible 00:09:47] training, you're going to, one of the first things you're going to do is say we need to deal with the litter here and you're going to call up home of pride and say, hey, can we have some of your free supplies to do litter pick up? Can you help us? can you help train our law enforcement officers on the litter laws? They're going to get in touch with us and get us to help them there. Adam Stoker: [00:10:06] Is this why you kind of moved into the crime space is because litter has such an impact on whether or not or it's a predictor of whether or not there's going to be a crime in that. Esther Wagner: [00:10:17] It's not just to predict litter actually encourages crime. They have done research and found that littered areas are more likely to be to have criminal activity because of the litter. The litter is announcing to any criminal that they can act with impunity and no one will react. Because if no one's picking up that litter, then no one cares. So, one of the first things that most communities do when they want to work on a revitalization effort is they call us up and ask us to help them with their litter problem. And we go in and we help them with a litter, pick up. The other thing we'll do, a lot of times we provide cameras, free cameras to law enforcement to try to catch those litters in the act. And a lot of times what we find is it's not the people in that community that's littering. It's people who are coming in and dumping because they know no one in that community is going to react. No one in that community is going to pick up the phone and call the police and say, hey, this guy just dumped his load right here. So litter is a harbinger for other crimes. It's announcing to criminals do what you want here. Adam Stoker: [00:11:21] Boy, this is very important because I think there's a lot of destinations right now complaining about a crime problem and they don't recognize the different touch points that lead to that problem. And also what would really impact solving that problem, which is starting with the litter. Esther Wagner: [00:11:37] Yes. Our public spaces a lot of times are created for inappropriate activity. Adam Stoker: [00:11:43] You know what? I'm super excited for your presentation tomorrow. I can't wait to hear it. I appreciate you taking a few minutes to chat with me. If people want to learn more because you are at least open to organizations outside of South Carolina, working with you, so if people want to learn more, what's the best way for them to do? Esther Wagner: [00:12:02] Go to palmettopride.org and you can find both my contact info, but also more about what we do and more about crime prevention through environmental design as well. Adam Stoker: [00:12:11] Wonderful. Esther Wagner: [00:12:11] And yes, our executive director has given permission that if I've done it in a couple of other states, I've gone and done some of the training as long as they cover the cost, we'll go do the training. Adam Stoker: [00:12:22] Great. Well, thank you so much for taking a few minutes and I hope the show goes amazing for you. Esther Wagner: [00:12:67] Thank you. Adam Stoker: [00:12:27] All right. Enjoy. [End of transcript]
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