July 2022

The CIE has been advising the NSW Environment Protection Authority, Sustainability Victoria, and The Queensland Department of Environment and Science on the economic cost of litter and illegal dumping.

As part of the project, The CIE conducted a choice modelling survey to estimate consumer willingness to pay (WTP) for reduced litter and illegal dumping. The purpose of the survey was to inform policy analysis by providing monetary estimates of the benefits of reducing litter and/or illegal dumping as inputs to cost‑benefit analysis (CBA). These benefits include:

  • making the places we visit look more pleasant or natural

  • preserving natural environments that we don’t visit

  • making places safer, and

  • reducing harm to wildlife and plants.

The study estimated WTP for this bundle of benefits and adjusted the estimates down by around 20 per cent to avoid double counting benefits measured by a separate, parallel study conducted by The CIE into the impacts of litter and illegal dumping on wildlife and plants.

A rigorous methodology was applied, including pretesting the survey instrument using in-depth interviews, conducting fieldwork over four separate waves, and expert peer review by Professor Riccardo Scarpa.

The survey was completed by 3017 consumers across New South Wales (NSW), Victoria, and Queensland, recruited through the Pureprofile online panel (Figure 1).

The result of our analysis of the survey data is a very rich model of consumer preferences. The model accounts for the levels of litter and illegally dumped waste that consumers currently experience. It can be used to estimate the benefits of reducing litter or illegal dumping in a range of different contexts, including different site types, different impacts on the spatial distribution of litter, and different impacts on the mix of littered and dumped items. A selection of insights from the model are provided below.

WTP to reduce litter and illegal dumping is highest at natural environments, such as beaches, waterways, national parks, bushland, and forests (figure 2). A relatively high proportion of beaches and waterways have noticeable litter. As a result, the total cost of litter at beaches and waterways is higher than for any other site type.

Plastic items are the costliest type of litter (figure 3). They are the most frequently noticed type of litter and are disliked more than all other types except hazardous/dangerous items. The perceived share of cigarette butts in the composition of litter is significantly lower than the share observed in litter counts, potentially because cigarette butts are less noticeable due to their small size. Biodegradable items such a food scraps, paper and cardboard are the least costly types of litter.

Household waste is the costliest type of illegal dumping (figure 4). Although it is disliked less than commercial, industrial or construction dumping, it is seen much more often. Green waste was found to be the least costly type of illegal dumping. However, respondents were not asked to factor in any biosecurity impacts from green waste.

WTP varies with the size of reductions in litter and illegal dumping (figure 5). Households care about the number of places that have noticeable litter, the amount of litter at those places, and the frequency with which they see illegally dumped waste. The cost of litter is higher than the cost of illegal dumping. For example, households across the three states are willing to pay $150 million per year to reduce the number of sites with noticeable litter by 20 per cent, but are willing to pay only $63 million per year to reduce the frequency with which they see illegally dumped waste by 20 per cent.

Consumers prefer some spaces to be cleaned up entirely, rather than an equal reduction in litter across all sites. WTP for a halving of the number of sites with noticeable litter is 27 per cent higher than WTP for a halving of the amount of litter at sites with noticeable litter (figure 6).

We estimate consumers across NSW, Victoria, and Queensland would be willing to pay around $1.4 billion per year for litter and illegally dumping to be eliminated completely (figure 7).

Details of the methodology and results are available in our report.

For further information, please contact Ben McNair in our Canberra office or Dennis McCarthy in our Sydney office.