It's an unusual way to spend a Sunday morning: enduring sweat-inducing heat, mountains of contaminated rubbish and the occasional stifling waft of rotting meat.

Packed into a Darwin recycling centre, a team of about 15 volunteers sorts through piles of coffee cups, thousands of plastic items and more than 600 kilograms of food waste.

It's all in a day's waste from a popular weekend market.

"We counted every single item by hand, every single piece of cutlery and straw," Environment Centre NT director Shar Molloy said.

"We counted 1,169 pieces of cutlery and 987 straws.

"There were over 1,000 coffee cups and smoothie cups and then the lids that go with them as well."

Among the waste was a heavy umbrella, an abandoned wok and plenty of fodder for the miscellaneous container — code for suspect packets of mysterious meat.

Volunteers recorded nearly 1,000 straws, more than 600 skewers and thousands of other plastic items. ( ABC Radio Darwin: Jesse Thompson )

Plastics are sorted into different types before they are weighed and disposed of. ( ABC Radio Darwin: Jesse Thompson )

All of the waste would usually go straight to landfill, but the Environment Centre NT has been sorting and weighing it to gauge the impact market culture has on the environment.

In Darwin, where visiting food stalls at weekend markets is part of the lifestyle, these statistics are likely to be repeated at the city's numerous suburban markets each week.

Item Weight (kg) Quantity Plastic cutlery 5.26 1,669 Straws 1.16 987 Plastic containers 33.34 1,100 Coffee cups 25.26 1,029 Cardboard and paper 148.44 N/A

Despite this, there is still a lack of information around how much waste is actually disposed of.

"If we know what's in there, then we know if the actions that we're taking to reduce waste are making a difference," Ms Molloy said.

"We would love to reduce the amount of single-use plastic waste that is going into landfill, and we know that we have a lot of markets here every week so there's a lot of waste that's generated."

Shar Molloy (right) wants to see a future where reusable crockery is available at market food stalls. ( ABC Radio Darwin: Jesse Thompson )

The collected plastics were so contaminated with food scraps they were unable to be recycled. ( ABC Radio Darwin: Jesse Thompson )

Ms Molloy and her team have been looking into the amounts of waste disposed of across Darwin's dry and wet seasons, which generally move in lockstep with the high and low tourism seasons respectively.

They were surprised to find that the amount of waste varied little across the two seasons, suggesting that locals might be to blame.

"When we look at the statistics, back in November the actual tonnage of waste was higher than June and July," she said.

"So we know that through the information that we provide, the ongoing awareness raising, that we can actually impact the behaviours of the local people that come to the market."

The volunteers recorded more than 600 kilograms of food waste. ( ABC Radio Darwin: Jesse Thompson )

It's meticulous, unglamorous work as volunteers spend hours sorting through waste. ( ABC Radio Darwin: Jesse Thompson )

Since China announced a ban on foreign rubbish imports last July, some councils have been under pressure to find a solution to mounting recyclable waste usually sent for offshore processing.

Results from the audit will be sent to market organisers, stallholders and two tiers of government to raise awareness, but Ms Molloy said China's decision was already placing local scrutiny on how to avoid throwing out recyclable materials in the first place.

"There has been some talk about recyclable materials building up down south," she said.

"So we really need to start looking at alternatives about how we recycle here locally, but also very much how do we avoid the waste in the first place."

The centre is working towards a vision in which washing facilities work in conjunction with reusable crockery so stallholders can serve and then clean materials on site.

For now, Ms Molloy encouraged locals to avoid taking unnecessary recyclables in the first place by equipping themselves with their own containers.

"Once you go through your cupboard, find those containers that you can reuse and pop them in the bag; once you do it once there's really no going back."