But it is hard to work out whether the buck, in fact, stops with anyone at all.

Thousands of junk mail pamphlets advertising Chemist Warehouse and Aldi supermarket were littering the nature strip beside the road, angering Lord Mayor Gordon Bradbery.

Mr Bradbery blasted the attitudes of people who litter and dump rubbish in public places, saying this attitude needs to change.

“With litter, there’s no excuse - and this is what really detracts from the beauty of Wollongong, this attitude towards litter,” he said.

“It's just bloody disgusting. I was appalled. This is continually degrading the beauty of the city.

“I was just so angry and distressed to think someone would do that.”

When contacted by the Mercury, Chemist Warehouse did not appear to be in a hurry to take responsibility for its advertising rubbish.

After a phone call to the Wollongong outlet, head office wanted to see “evidence” that the rubbish was there.

A manager then said the problem would be owned by the distributor of pamphlets, not the brand plastered all across the ads themselves.

For its part, Wollongong City Council said the rubbish was a private matter.

“Council believes the litter is on private property and it’s the owners’ responsibility to clean up,” a spokesman said.

It was BlueScope who took action to clean it up, as much of the rubbish was on the company’s fenceline. Some was also on the council-owned strip, and some on the median strip.

Nonetheless, BlueScope did the right thing and cleaned up, despite having nothing to do with the ads, their distribution, or the littering.

It raises the question of whether companies should be made more responsible for their own rubbish, and there has been a push to make companies more responsible for material they produce.

The other side of the argument, put by food and beverage companies, is that littering is a matter of individual responsibility.

Often, the difficulty is finding that individual.