TOP TEN

Every year the 'Top Ten Rubbish Items' collected are recorded from the ten most commonly found items of rubbish. In 2005, these accounted for 57% of all items found, a 4% increase from 2004.

Cigarette Butts have been steadily increasing as the most commonly found item, in 2005 accounting for 31% of the Top Ten items and 17% of all items found. This is an increase from 2004 when they represented 15% of all items found, and a staggering increase from 2003 when they represented 10% of the total items surveyed.

Glass pieces were the second most commonly found items, accounting for 12% of the Top Ten Rubbish Items and 6% of all rubbish found - up from 4% in 2004.

Third place was shared by glass alcoholic bottles and chips & confectionery bags, each accounting for 10% of the Top Ten items and 6% of all rubbish found. The percentage of chips and confectionery bags dropped from 2004 when they accounted for 13% of the Top Ten rubbish items and 7% of all rubbish found.

Small paper pieces accounted for 8% of the Top Ten Rubbish items, followed by plastic straws (7%), metal bottle caps and lids (6%), PET bottles (6%), metal alcoholic cans (5%) and metal softdrink cans (5%).

The Direct Impact of Litter

Every year the Rubbish Report records the Top Ten rubbish items based on the amount of items found in a particular rubbish category. This year, in a project funded by Nestle Australia as part of its commitment under the National Packaging Covenant, Hyder Consulting — Australia's leading waste minimisation consultancy — applied an expert assessment of the Top Ten data to determine which items have the highest environmental impact.

The Direct Litter Indicator (DLI) and the Cumulative Litter Indicator (CLI) were the tools used. The DLI determines the persistence of different types of litter in the environment by multiplying the number of littered items found by the size of the area and the time the litter stays in the environment. The CLI goes one step further by also including the environmental impact of litter on flora and fauna and the 'risk level' including the financial cost to pick up, collect and dispose of litter items together with the impacts on community amenity.

Plastic bags, including garbage/rubbish bags and miscellaneous items such as carpet and car machinery parts represent 54% of the CLI scores for all litter surveyed.

While also coming within the Top Ten of the Cumulative Litter Index, smaller, lighter items such as plastic bags (supermarket/retail) and plastic bags (chips & confectionery bags) scored 10% and 3% respectively.

It is interesting that items such as car machinery and carpet should represent the highest scores CLI scores among the Top Ten Items, when cigarette butts in fact accounted for the highest number of items found.

This demonstrates that illegally dumped items such as carpet and car machinery, while perhaps not accounting for the most number of illegally dumped items, do in fact have the highest environmental impact due to the cost involved in removing them, and the negative impact they have on flora and fauna.

This year, Clean up Australia has worked to combat illegal dumping through programs such as the Smorgon Steel Great Scrap Round Up. This powerful initiative aims to counteract the harmful impact of illegally dumped items such as vehicles, by recycling scrap metal from public and private land.

Smorgon Steel will either pay cash for every tonne of scrap metal collected, or offer a 20% discount off the value of Smorgon Scrap Metal Products.