Douglas Simon wants to teach his son Riley, 6, about the importance of being a tidy kiwi. Photo / Andrew Warner
Rotorua man Douglas Simon leaves the house each morning with a rubbish bag and grabber stick in hand.
In the short time it takes him to walk to his work at Ngongotahā Primary School, the bag is almost always bursting at the seams with the rubbish he has picked up on the way.
Now Simon is calling for people to "open their eyes" and notice the grub filling the city's streets and waterways.
Littering in the city can get a person fined between $300 and $7500 or even prosecuted but a conservation specialist said compliance was vital to ensure the city did not suffer "catastrophic" ecological consequences.
Simon began his quest to clean up some Ngongotahā streets at the start of this year.
He noticed how overrun the streets had become with litter and after being born and bred in the area, he wanted to be able to take pride in how it looked.
"I grew up with the mentality of not my mess, not my problem but realised I could only think like that for so long."
He said he was easily filling a medium-size rubbish bag a day of rubbish, with fast-food packaging, cigarette packets and alcohol bottles being the most common finds.
He would find himself rifling in long grass and picking up an abundance of cigarette butts and lollipop sticks too, he said.
"So many people turn a blind eye to it so it has become normal ... it would make such a difference if people started taking notice."
Simon used to drive logging trucks and would watch in horror as forests and country roads became dumping grounds for people's household waste.
He said that many central North Island towns shared the city's "rubbish dumping problem" and he believed if landfill costs were wiped, it would make all the difference.
"It's all about eliminating and educating," he said.
"Take pride in your town."
Rotorua Lakes Council's solid waste and sustainability manager Prashant Praveen said littering showed a "lack of respect" for the community and environment.
Drink bottles, food wrappers and cans were the most common items that were littered, but Prashant said it was difficult to catch people in the act.
The council provided bins in public places, put up signage to deter people from littering and ran community clean-ups when possible, he said.
A person could be fined between $400 and $5000 for littering, and, if the litter could endanger someone such as a broken bottle, the fine went up to $7500 per offender.
Bay of Plenty Regional Council compliance manager Stephen Mellor said littering posed multiple dangers to the city's waterways both ecologically and culturally.
He said they received about 100 complaints a year about litter making its way into the waterways and had to follow an enforcement process that could include a $300 fine or prosecution depending on severity.
"Rubbish dumping is not pretty and it comes at a substantial cost to the community, not only financially but socially and environmentally too.
"While we do our best to clean up rubbish as soon as we are aware of it, it shouldn't be there in the first place."
Department of Conservation Rotorua supervisor Caraline Abbott said litter caused significant environmental damage and dangers to local wildlife and had been a consistent issue for years.
Chemicals leaching into waterways and animals getting tangled in plastic were both common and could have "catastrophic" ecological consequences, she said.
She said a considerable amount of time and money was spent disposing of items that had been dumped and when a large amount of litter was found, they collected evidence for prosecution.
The team had surveillance cameras in a number of areas to support their compliance effort, she said.
She said community groups and local businesses had jumped on board to help, like the Sudima Hotel, which ran litter clean-ups around the Sulphur Bay Wildlife Refuge, and River Rats, who helped retrieve litter from the waterways.