Friends of Mallacoota VCDS Diversion Program Partnership - Litter Finalist 2026 Tidy Towns.
Mallacoota's population swings from 1,100 permanent residents to around 10,000 in peak summer, and every one of those extra visitors brings extra rubbish with them.
The Mallacoota Foreshore Holiday Park and Friends of Mallacoota built a simple fix: trailers placed around the park let guests sort their eligible containers for the Victorian container deposit scheme instead of tossing them in general waste, with volunteers from Friends of Mallacoota collecting and depositing them at the town's container return point, one of the most remote in Victoria. The park supplied trailers and safety training; the volunteers supplied the labour and the reason to bother.
Because the local deposit point can't absorb everything at once during peak season, volunteers deliberately spread their collections across the year, smoothing out the seasonal spike so casual holidaymakers and permanent residents can both still make their own deposits without a queue.
In just the first three months, nearly 6,000 containers were diverted from landfill, cutting the park's waste fees and raising $600 for Friends of Mallacoota's ongoing conservation work in and around Croajingolong National Park. The trial has since been extended through to September 2026.
The X-factor is that it's a genuine win-win: council-adjacent infrastructure did the heavy lifting, and volunteers did the rest, funding their own environmental work one container at a time.
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