A group of volunteers has braved big swells and strong winds to clean-up some of the most remote beaches in Australia, smashing a record for the amount of garbage recovered.

The week-long expedition involved three dozen people travelling on fishing boats to the rugged south-west of Tasmania to pick up mountains of rubbish, mostly plastics.

Volunteers retrieved just over 79,000 items from south-west beaches of Tasmania, setting a record for the amount of garbage collected. ( ABC News: Michael Atkin )

The South West Marine Debris Cleanup, which is now in its 13th year and run by environmental scientist Matt Dell, is funded purely by donations and sponsorship.

This year the clean-up set a record for most items collected, with 37,000 items picked up in one day and a total of just over 79,000 items for the week.

Mr Dell said it was disappointing that the problem was getting worse.

"It's so obvious in this beautiful environment when there's rubbish lying around, it's supposed to be our jewel of the environment in Tasmania and it's pretty sad," he said.

"It has very, very open exposed beaches, they receive the highest wave energy of any of the beaches in Australia, and for that reason they're exposed and they collect a lot of rubbish."

The volunteers started at Cox's Bight, a long rocky beach inside the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area only accessible by light plane, a multi-day bushwalk or boat.

On the beach they found soft drink and beer cans, household items like a tomato sauce bottle and microplastics.

Mel Sheppard came from Queensland to pick up rubbish and said it was confronting to see what had washed up.

"It's upsetting but at the same time it's a really good feeling to be able to come and get it," she said.

"You see what you think would be a pristine wilderness area, and there's just so much rubbish without people having been living in this area.

"Every plastic bottle and plastic bag that we use at home has to end up somewhere."

Australian coastlines 'choked by a toxic wave of plastic'

Ula Majewski has made the trip four times and said the clean-up was her favourite time of the year.

But she was still overwhelmed by the huge volume of plastic.

"Our coastlines are absolutely being choked by a toxic wave of plastic," she said.

Joe Vukic holds a crate with the Sydney Fish Market logo, one of many pieces of garbage collected. ( ABC News: Michael Atkin )

"We can come around here to some of the planet's most remote beaches and still clean up - last year for example, almost 50,000 pieces of rubbish in less than a week.

"[It] is a really worrying sign for things to come."

Microplastics, which are almost impossible to spot with the naked eye, can be deadly for marine birds like the Shearwater because they cannot distinguish them from food.

"Some beaches we'll pick up 2,000 or 3,000 of these [micro plastics] in 50 square metres," Mr Dell said.

"This is what the birds ingest. They can't digest them and their stomachs fill up and eventually they can't survive."

Larger plastics also pose a problem and Mr Dell has seen seals, albatrosses and other marine birds entangled in the pollution.

The group also found large amounts of fishing gear including buoys and bait straps, and even a tub with the Sydney Fish Market logo on the side.

Fisherman Dave Wyatt donated his boat to the clean-up and said he was disappointed people in his industry were doing the wrong thing.

"I'm not saying everybody does it, but that's the indication," he said.

"We see parts of trawl net and parts of long lining gear which may be lost in storms or washed overboard, but it seems like there's a lot of cut-off gear and just discarded."

'So far no traction' in negotiations with fishing industry

Mr Dell has been negotiating with the fishing industry, to move away from plastic gear.

"The bait box straps that wrap up the bait, they're plastic," he said.

"They last a fair time in the environment and they break up into lots of small pieces.

A Chinese port bottle was also one of the quirky items found on the remote Tasmanian beaches. ( ABC News: Michael Atkin )

"We've picked up 10,000 or 12,000 of these in the life of the clean-up, and they're not really that necessary.

"The hard thing is the bait manufacturers aren't really that interested in changing the way they've been doing things.

"It's been rather difficult, we've been trying for a few years - so far no traction."

Quirky items found included a Chinese port bottle, a spare tyre, a dice and an axe-head.

At the end of the day the garbage haul is loaded into inflatable dinghies and taken back to one of the fishing boats for counting.

The data is meticulously recorded so a pattern of pollution can be mapped and trends in plastic identified.

The information is used by researchers at the CSIRO and other institutions.

"It actually starts building a picture of what's washing up on the beaches, how it's changing and places that I can go looking to stop that rubbish ending up there," Mr Dell said.

'You can feel like it perhaps is a losing battle'

Mr Dell believes a national container deposit scheme to recycle items like beer cans and water bottles would be a major step towards keeping these remote beaches clean.

But he considers that unlikely, after Coca-Cola won a court action to stop a scheme going ahead in the Northern Territory.

"We're being impeded by people who don't want to pay the price for their product environmentally," Mr Dell said.

According to a recent study by the CSIRO, 8 million tonnes of plastic enters the world's oceans every year.

"With plastic production doubling every 10 years, if we continue the way we're going ... it's going to poison the ecosystem from the ground up basically," he said.

But Mr Dell and his volunteers are doing what they can to stop one small part of Australia being inundated by a wave of plastic.

"We visit a very small proportion of the coastline, places where we can land with the dinghies and get on and off the beaches safely," he said.

"We've got 95 per cent of it that we haven't even visited yet, so I reckon it would be a full-time job for hundreds of people.

"It feels very satisfying at the end of the day to walk back along the beach that you've cleaned and not have to look down to actually appreciate it, that's fantastic, I don't mind doing it at all."

Ms Majewski agreed the difficult expedition was worth it.

"When you are standing on these wild beaches and seeing the amount of rubbish that's washed up on them, it sometimes can be really heartbreaking and you can feel like it perhaps is a losing battle," she said.

"But I think what we all take from that is a lot of inspiration to keep cleaning our beaches, and also really push for that systemic change that really needs to happen."