He's taken care of his work-for-the-dole obligations for the week doing landcare work at Greenhouse Park, so he'll soon get to work on the full-time job he does in his spare time - picking up the rubbish people leave behind in Wollongong's most picturesque places.

While his three-legged dingo Orrajaal mugs for a meaty treat, Palmer sits back and marvels at the regeneration work performed across the shallow water at Puckeys reserve.

"The only introduced species we see here now are these Norfolk pines - this place is basically as it was 270 years ago," he said.

"And look at the way people are using it - it would have been pretty much the same, but the people were Koori. This would have been paradise. So why would yo not wish to keep it clean?"

In recent years, Palmer was part of a dedicated landcare team which spent seven years cleaning out decades worth of rubbish from Puckeys. These days he finds his own projects.

Read more: Beach guardian tells of Royal National Park's plastic ruin

Often it's Wollongong Harbour that is his focus, and regular harbour users are used to the sight of Palmer with his dog, stuffing item after item into yellow bags for proper disposal.

It might be in the early morning, it might be in the night - he'll tailor his appearances for the "shifts" in harbour users, from the fishers and their wasted hooks, to the car lovers with their fast food, to the dog walkers and their poo bags.

"I'll monitor it and either turn up late in the afternoon, but the prime times are Thursday night, Friday night and through the weekend.

"Depending on the volume of people, I'll drive past and see, before there's a change of shift of the people who use it, I'll get in and clean it up as best I can."

It's a labour of love for the city which has been his home for 65 years. The way Mr Palmer tells it, he learned his dedication to keeping the environment clean when he was a student at the Illawarra Grammar School.

"If you were caught in school uniform littering, or swearing or doing anything wrong, you ended up at the school Friday afternoon and that detention was picking up papers," he said.

"While I only had to do that once or twice, the logic of 'don't mess the environment' sort of stuck. We were taught we're not too privileged or not to posh to pick up.

"But it's a totally different mindset now ... we have a lot of people from [the western suburbs of Sydney] coming down, and I don't begrudge them that. By all means, come here for the weekend, but please use the bins.

"It's an attitude thing - the whole fast food thing. When we were kids you went to the fish and chip shop and the food was wrapped in newspaper. You traded in bottles. Then everything got disposable."

He said part of the problem at the harbour is different governing agencies having responsibility for different sections.

"You have to cut down half a rainforest to get them to even turn up and have a meeting - just to get all the memos out," he said.

That, and there's not enough bins.

Mr Palmer is a solo operator (apart from his canine companion who helps sniff out fast food wrappers) but in his rubbish-busting efforts he is not alone.

Austinmer doctor and dad Paul Hoskins can often be seen walking past the local school with the harvest from the Ocean Plastic Patrol - an initiative he started where kids and their parents meet before school weekly for a blitz on beach rubbish.

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Dr Hoskins says that as well as cleaning up plastic and saving marine life, the kids are learning about tackling problems together, taking responsibility for their own backyard and giving them purpose beyond their own needs.

There's the Illawarra Local Aboriginal Land Council's green team, venturing into the places where stormwater leaves rubbish after picking it up where humans left it, in the streets and parks.

Weekender has reported on the work done by sisters Narelle Thomas and Lorraine Brown over many years at Coomaditchie.

There's the Surfrider Foundation which organises regular beach cleanups - one held earlier this month at North Beach netted 41kg of rubbish, on a day where Palmer said he thought the beach already looked clean.

There's council workers who have to cover a huge stretch of land in the early hours of the morning.

And there's countless other individuals, couples and families who do their bit to "take three for the sea" and with their actions encourage others to do likewise.

These people know who they are, and the rest of the community owes them a debt.

Wollongong's beaches, creeks and parks would look very different if people - the same people every week - weren't taking action to remove litter.

Back at Puckeys Lagoon it's still stinking hot and Richard Gifford Palmer is happy with his contribution.

"You get more work out of a volunteer than a paid person - because they've got an interest," he said.

"At the moment it's pretty good - we're not seeing the volume of rubbish we've had over the past few years. But given a few hot days that all might change."

Then he finds a cigarette butt.

"I've been sitting on one!" he fumes.

"This is toxic waste. They're by far the worst. If I had a dollar for every one of these I'd picked up ... I'd have been heli-skiing for the last 10 years."

Palmer deserves our praise but that's not why he does it.

"I'm not after an OBE or someone to pin a medal on my chest," said.

"I just want people to use the bins. I ain't going to be here forever."