More than 1500 litres of fast-food packing, plastic, oil heaters, glass and green waste was removed from Dunedin beaches on Saturday.
About 70 volunteers took part in the Dunedin coastal clean-up organised by Keep Dunedin Beautiful and Our Seas Our Future as part of Sea Week.
Our Seas Our Future leader Noel Jhinku said at least 1500 litres of non-recyclable rubbish and a further 300 litres of recyclable materials were found on the city's beaches.
A group of volunteers from the Yellow Eyed Penguin Trust collected a significant amount of illegally dumped household rubbish from Smails Beach which included televisions, broken glass and green waste, Mr Jhinku said.
"It's probably about the same amount we collected last year, which isn't great," he said.
Keep Dunedin Beautiful co-ordinator Allison Wallace said teams of volunteers cleared beaches all the way from St Clair to the Otago Peninsula and what they found was disappointing.
"They brought back all sorts of stuff like bits of plastic, cardboard and lot of fast-food packing."
