Hosted by the Clean Curalo community group on March 3, more than 18 people turned up to give a hand, ranging from the ages of seven to 70.

The group filled 15 bags with rubbish, and found two tyres, bike frames, some timber and a Coles trolley.

The turnout on the day was celebrated by Clean Curalo committee member Garry Hunter, who said he was really happy seeing the range of ages involved.

"It was fantastic to see the young ones involved and to see them focused on the environment at such a young age too," he said.

Single use plastics were the most common finds in the clean-up Mr Hunter said, with participants spreading out to seven inlets that feed into the catchment.

"We concentrate on those because it's a lot easier to collect rubbish in those areas before they flow into the major tributaries," he said.

Of the plastics found on the day major causes for concern were the small plastics like cigarette butts and individually wrapped lollies.

"There's a lot of these small single use plastics which are important to clean up because they can be ingested by marine life and pose a big problem for our environment today," Mr Hunter said.

Another issue was the discovery of used and unused 'doggie bags'.

"We're finding doggie bags not only in the catchment but within the lake itself. They're not being properly disposed off and are being thrown into the environment," he said.

"I think a lot of suppliers give the impression that the bags will degrade in months, not years in landfill, let alone water."

Mr Hunter said cans and bottles were also unearthed within the catchments and lake.

"No matter how many times we go into the tidal zone to do a clean up, we always find old rubbish that's been covered in soot or rust," he said.

Although pleased with the results on the day and grateful to those who came out to participate, Mr Hunter said litter clean up was "not sustainable on its own".

"We need to work on litter prevention. Litter clean up is really our last defence before it gets into our waterways," he said.

Mr Hunter said one of the ways to help reduce plastics was to make conscious changes to how people consume their goods, reducing single use packaging.

"There are really simple things people can do for litter prevention which we can adopt in our day to day lives and in our choices in the supermarket," he said.

"You might only be able to make a couple of changes in your shopping list, but over a long period of time, it'll make a big difference."

Among the lifestyle choices is the switch to bringing your own coffee cup, with Australians contributing around 1.8 billion disposable coffee cups to landfill per year.

Mr Hunter said he was thankful to all those who made the community-clean up possible from participants on the day to Clean up Australia, which provided cleaning equipment, and committee members who had raised the funds through local return and earn recycling systems.

"I'd just like to thank the people who participated. I think the volume of rubbish collected is a great result for our environment and our waterways," he said.