Catch it in the Catchment coordinator Trish Haeusler, who also runs Plastic Free Launceston, recently held the annual catchment event which aims to not just clean up rubbish but change people's behavioural habits to tackle the waste issue.

"It's more a movement than a clean up," she said.

The week-long event saw a total of 775 kilograms of rubbish collected with 324 people across 34 sites participating.

The total only included the rubbish that could be bagged. It did not include the bigger items found such as shopping trolleys or the washing machine one group stumbled upon.

"There were considerably less straws so that was good and the areas that had a really big area that had a clean last year all showed a decrease in rubbish," Ms Haeusler said.

However, she said that on the negative side the majority of the waste collected was plastic.

Though there were less plastic straws there was a considerable amount of plastic packaging and food wrappers.

In other news:

Ms Haeusler said there was also an incredible number of cigarette butts of which there were "too many to count".

"Most people don't know what they're made out of and think they are made out of paper and think they will break down," she said.

"But they are made out of cellulose acetate and don't break down."

The other item Ms Haeusler mentioned seeing a lot of was wipes, which also do not break down.

She said there is a lack of understanding when it comes to what will and won't break down and how when something does break down, it could be into microplastics.

"Every purchase we make, we need to think about where it will end up.

"You don't want our marine life eating this stuff."

She urged people to look at the purchases they are making and pick more sustainable and environmentally friendly options such as buying a bamboo toothbrush over plastic and using reusable produce bags instead of the plastic ones.

"There's so many good alternatives that are available now.

"If it will end up in landfill quickly, we need to rethink it."

Each of us can make little changes to help the overall aim. It can start as small as taking your own keep cup to cafes or choosing to buy produce items without plastic packaging if you are in a position where you can.

Ms Haeusler said the onus is on both the producer and the consumer to make changes that will help the environment.

"You have to factor in all parts when something has been manufactured and what its end point is. What will happen to it when its done?"

"There's a lot of big environmental problems and a lot of them we feel like we can't do anything about but this a tangible one, even if it's a little bit, you can do something about it."

The plastics that end up in our environment can have serious and detrimental impacts on our wildlife and marine life too through ingestion and entanglement.

PhD student at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies Peter Puskic said his research is centered on the plastic ingestion in seabirds and what it is doing to them.

He said stopping pollution at its source was the most effective way to get rid of it and stop it harming our marine life.

"Catch it in the Catchment is so important because it is one of those localised clean ups that stops pollution at its source."

He said targeting a river is a smart way to clean up and stop plastic getting into our major waterways and affecting our marine life.

Though clean ups do help, Mr Puskic said not all plastic can be seen or are accessible to pick up, like those plastics that sit on the bottom of the sea floor. Therefore, clean ups are can't tackle the whole problem.

He said the impacts of plastics are one thing but coming up with solutions that deal with the long term problem is another.

Seasonal ingestion of anthropogenic debris in an urban population of gulls published this year is a paper Mr Puskic worked on with other researchers exploring what materials gulls had been ingesting and where they have been feeding. The paper found debris was present in 92.51 per cent of the 374 regurgitated pellets from Pacific gulls collected between 2018 and 2020 in Tasmania.

Plastics and glass were the most common types of debris with a percentage rate of 86.63 and 64.71 respectively.

However, plenty of intact, household items were also found in the pellets including dental floss and food wrappers.

Mr Puskic echoed the words of Ms Haeusler that there are things people can do to help without getting overwhelmed.

"It can be overwhelming and that can push people away."

He cited getting involved in local community groups and caring about the place you live in as hugely important but that we also need policies to support the movement.

"I mean there's the stuff we have been trying for years...but it's not enough I don't think to have these grassroots movements.

"The individual can do a lot but the push now is we need all levels of government to get on board in terms of creating policy."

He said COVID-19 saw the impact that a massive societal shift can have and how those shifts are key to making the changes needed.

"We learnt lessons from this and I think that we can tackle big global problems if we have the incentive."