Overview
The Litter Act 2007 is Tasmania’s key litter legislation, providing strong anti-littering provisions to:
- prohibit the deposit of litter in the environment
- regulate the distribution of materials that may become litter
- protect and enhance the quality of the natural and urban Tasmanian environments
- provide increased penalties for dumping of large quantities of waste.
The Act provides a legal basis for the Litter Hotline and online reporting, where littering from a motor vehicle or vessel can be reported. The Act also supports Report Rubbish which is the online web portal to report dumped rubbish.
The Litter Act substantially came into effect on 26 December 2007 and the remaining provisions came into effect on 17 January 2008. Further amendments came into effect on 2 December 2019 aimed at addressing the illegal dumping of large quantities of waste and enacting new penalties for corporate offenders.
Legislation Online
The Litter Act is available online at the Tasmanian Legislation website.
Supporting Information
Provisions
Provisions of the Litter Act include:
- graded offences for littering by volume
- liability for motor vehicle and motor vessel owners for littering from their vehicles and vessels
- offences for unlawfully affixing documents to vehicles or structures and insecure delivery of unsolicited documents
- the issue of infringement notices
- the issue of litter abatement notices
- the reporting of litter offences
- forfeiture of any vehicle, vessel or trailer used in an offence
- a special penalty equivalent of any monetary benefit received from committing an offence
- offence of damaging, tampering or interfering with a camera being used to detect littering
Regulations
Regulations made under the Litter Act include: