To make a litter report, go to the Report Rubbish website.
What is Litter?
Litter is material that is deposited in the environment in a way that creates disorder.
Frequently littered items include:
Litter can also include:
balloons (see EPA information on balloon releases)
food scraps
household rubbish
abandoned vehicles
construction or demolition equipment
garden clippings
furniture
material falling from an unsecured load
It is any item that finds its way into the environment which should not be there.
Materials left next to rubbish bins or skips are litter. People with good intentions also leave items outside full charity bins, but this is also littering.
It can be large or small in quantity, from a single item to large scale illegal dumping.
Litter in Tasmania
The Tasmanian Government commissioned statewide litter surveys from 2023 to 2026. A total of 24 sites were surveyed twice yearly (December and May). The sites were spread across four local government areas with varying socio-economic profiles. Two were in the Greater Hobart Region, one was in the Greater Launceston Region, and one was in the North-West Region.
Using the Australian Litter Measure (AusLM), sites were classified into six site-type categories: residential areas, retail areas, industrial areas, recreational parks, beaches and main roads.
Some of the results from the three years of surveys show that:
Over the three-year period from 2023–26, there was a substantial reduction in litter across the sites surveyed. The total number of litter items decreased by 59%, from 7,275 items in 2023–24 to 3,018 items in 2025–26.
The volume of litter also declined by approximately 60%, from 1,246 litres to 503 litres.
The composition of litter has not changed significantly. Plastic (food and non-food packaging, plus fragments) continued to make up the largest proportion of items counted (42%), with paper and cardboard (packages and boxes) being the next most common material.
Cigarette butts and filters are the most commonly littered item; however, their contribution to overall litter volume is small due to their size. The number of cigarette butts recorded decreased from 1,046 in 2023–24 to 509 in 2025–26.
While single-use plastics decreased by 38% over the three years, they are not declining at the same rate as other litter. Ongoing surveys will help track the success of the Tasmanian Government's planned phase-out of particular single-use plastic items.
Main roads are the most littered locations, followed by industrial and retail areas. Parks, residential areas and beaches are the least littered, possibly due to community and council clean-up activities.
Tasmania's Container Refund Scheme, Recycle Rewards, was launched on 1 May 2025. Eligible containers in the litter stream declined by 65% since 2023, indicating that CRS-eligible containers may be declining at a faster rate than the broader litter stream.
The results from these surveys will be used to inform policymakers, particularly in relation to single-use plastics and container refund schemes, and to track the success of these policies. Surveys are planned to continue into the future.
The results may also be used by local government and organisations wishing to track the success of anti-litter campaigns.
Results from previous litter surveys in Tasmania are available in the Annual Litter Survey documents:
Why is litter so bad?
Litter is pollution and can harm people, wildlife and our waterways. Littered items can encourage pests as well as the spread of germs and disease. It can also degrade water quality if there are harmful chemicals associated with it. Litter is wasteful and costly to clean-up. Litter also affects the way visitors and locals view our State.
People have become increasingly concerned about litter in the ocean, particularly plastic.
Animals and birds can be entangled in plastic, such as rope, fishing line and the strings attached to balloons. This can:
disrupt their feeding
restrict movement
increase vulnerability to predators
cause restriction that results in infection or loss of limbs
decrease their hunting ability and/or cause the animals to drown
In the marine environment, animals and birds can also ingest plastic and balloons, mistaking them for food, with devastating impacts.
Plastic can enter the food web and even microscopic zooplankton have been observed (under a microscope) eating plastic.
Most (80%) of the litter in the ocean comes from the land including:
The remaining sources come from fishing vessels, offshore platforms and vessels.
Litter on the land can arise from people who neglect to dispose of their waste in rubbish bins. Windblown litter can arise from landfill sites and waste transfer stations, and if people do not secure their waste during transport.
Litter prevention, education, collection and enforcement costs the community millions of dollars every year. Discarded lit cigarettes can cause bushfires, with huge environmental, community, personal and financial toll.
Litter also has many other costs that are hard to measure and see, such as wildlife that are injured or die, reduced amenity and a reduction in community safety eg from broken glass.
How can I help to reduce litter?
Reducing and preventing littering and dumping is everyone's responsibility.
Information on other Tasmanian Government initiatives can be found on our website, including the introduction of the Container Refund Scheme, and work on phasing-out several problematic single use plastics types by 2025.
Other Tasmanian initiatives can be found on their websites:
Keep Australia Beautiful conducts the Sustainable Communities – Tidy Towns Awards every year in Tasmania, to celebrate community sustainability projects, including litter reduction. KAB also conducts a Sustainable Schools Grants program annually.
Clean Up Australia hosts clean-up events every year, in hundreds of locations around Australia.
AUSMAP is a nationwide citizen science initiative, surveying Australian beaches for microplastic pollution. By understanding plastic pollution, this may help find the sources of plastic pollution.
Tangaroa Blue is a nationwide database on beach litter, which people can participate in when they are doing a beach clean-up.
Take 3 for the Sea is a campaign which encourages people to pick up litter whenever they are at the beach.
Tasmanians can also get involved with the Great South West Clean-Up, where thousands of pieces of litter are collected annually in remote South West Tasmania.