Shaping A Cleaner Australia: PART 4 - Keep Australia Beautiful Week: Modern Advocacy in Action

Published On: December 4th, 2025

Part 4 – Keep Australia Beautiful Week: Modern Advocacy in Action

Keep Australia Beautiful Week (KAB Week) was originally launched in 1972, announced by then Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, who asked all Australians to get behind the nation’s first anti-litter campaign and “live without litter” for the week. Since then, KAB Week has been held annually, evolving over more than 50 years. What began as a simple push to stop littering has grown into a broad, dynamic platform for sustainability, behaviour change, and protecting biodiversity.

Education at the heart

KAB Week is designed as a national learning platform that sparks conversation, builds understanding, and inspires practical action. Each year, a suite of resources – blogs, articles, guides, and tools – supports schools, workplaces, councils and community groups in adopting more sustainable practices.

KAB Week weaves together awareness, education, and community participation to turn individual actions into measurable environmental impact.

Collaboration with Landcare Australia

Over the past two years, KAB Week has partnered with Landcare Australia in a cross-sector effort to enhance local environments and preserve biodiversity. Together, the organisations have encouraged communities to pair litter clean-ups with planting days and habitat restoration — a holistic approach that tackles both waste and ecosystem health.

Recent campaigns: Turning awareness into action

Modern KAB Week campaigns explore the full lifecycle of waste, where it comes from, how it can be avoided, and how everyday decisions at the supermarket, café, workplace or school ripple through ecosystems. Each theme encourages Australians to connect daily habits with real environmental outcomes.

2023 – The 6 R’s of Waste
“The 6 R’s of Waste: Refuse, Rot, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Restore” encouraged Australians to rethink their everyday relationship with waste. The campaign shifts attention upstream, as avoiding unnecessary waste is far more effective than managing it once it becomes litter. By choosing one “R” to commit to, participants could see how small, deliberate habits form the foundation of long-term behaviour change.

2024 – When You’re Out and About, Leave Only Your Footprints
This campaign addressed a major source of litter: the waste created while travelling, commuting or socialising. It emphasised forward planning, packing reusables, choosing low-waste options, and picking up rubbish along the way.
KAB’s educational content explored the biodiversity impacts of litter, from seabirds ingesting plastic fragments to marine animals becoming entangled in discarded materials. A key feature was the partnership with Snap Send Solve, which empowered the public to report litter, graffiti, and illegal dumping quickly and easily.
The theme reinforced a simple message: responsibility for waste doesn’t stop at the front door.

2025 – Picking Up the Pieces
This campaign invited households, workplaces, councils and community groups to register clean-ups and share their efforts nationwide. The 10-minute pick-up challenge highlighted that meaningful action doesn’t need to be time-consuming, small contributions accumulate into significant community impact.

KAB also spotlighted iconic Australian species, from sea turtles to dingoes, showing how litter affects their survival. These stories gave a face to the issue, helping people understand the direct connection between human waste and wildlife wellbeing.

Conclusion

KAB Week shows that small actions add up, picking up litter, making sustainable choices, or joining a local clean-up all matter. Keeping Australia beautiful isn’t the responsibility of one person or organisation; real change happens when individuals, communities, councils, and industries work together.

This momentum continues in Part 5, where programs like Paint Australia Beautiful and Contain Your Waste, turn awareness into action, transforming communities and the environment alike.

Looking Ahead

In Part 5, we explore behavioural change and education, through grass roots campaigns like Paint Australia Beautiful, and gamifyied challenges like Contain Your Waste.

WRITTEN BY: Rosie Starr (KAB Content Creator – Volunteer)