Strewn along the track and tossed into the bush is the stuff people no longer want in their lives.

"It's appalling," he says. "It's like it's the tip. Quite clearly it's people who just think it's their right to come in here and dump."

Peter White is a Maitland-based investigator for the Hunter-Central Coast Regional Illegal Dumping Squad.

He is inspecting one of the dumping hot spots in his area, only it is not deep in the bush. Rather, this large parcel of land is in the suburb of Tenambit, wedged between two housing estates. It is private land, but that hasn't kept the dumpers out. Nor have the fences and gates the landowner installed.

"One of the gates lasted a day, the other one lasted a week," Mr White says, adding he feels sorry for the landowner. "It's a $70,000 clean-up bill for him in here."

The waste is a reflection of how we live. It looks as though houses have been held over this land and their contents shaken out. There is everything from mattresses and whitegoods to kids' toys and even that symbol of festive cheer, a Christmas tree.

"I'd say the vast majority of our job is household dumping," says Peter White. "That ranges from everything from two or three bags of rubbish that could have gone into a bin to trailer loads."

About 20 minutes' drive away, along a track etched into the bush just off John Renshaw Drive near Kurri Kurri, Jason Robbs guides his vehicle into another illegal dumping ground.

"It's really bad in here," Mr Robbs, a RID investigator in the Cessnock area, says as we edge past a couple of couches and an overturned and burnt-out car. "It just goes on, more and more as you go in.

"It's bad for the environment and it's horrible, but it also adds to the fire load in the bush."

In this area, a bushfire tore through in summer.

Jason Robbs pulls up before a mound of rubbish.

"I haven't come across this one before,". Mr Robbs says. "It's a new one, or newish."

Like Peter White, Jason Robbs is a former police officer, with years working as a detective. He applies the skills of his former life as he carefully picks through the pile of household items and smashed-up kitchen cupboards, examining fragments of paper, looking for clues.

"There's an old saying in the cops, Locard's theory of physical evidence, that the crook always - always - leaves something behind," he says. "You've just got to find it."

The squad members also use technology, such as covert cameras in hot spots and drones. Sometimes the pointers to the waste's origin stand out to the investigators.

Earlier, in the nearby Hunter Economic Zone, Jason Robbs had shown an area where a man helping his sick mother move home had dumped a pile of items, including some of her medical records.

"I was standing out here in the bush, holding up X-rays," Mr Robbs says, explaining that dumper was tracked down and fined.

Others had evidently dumped items around this site more recently, including clothing and unopened cans of food.

"Some of that stuff could've gone to charity," Mr Robbs murmurs.

About 20 kilometres away from Kurri Kurri, near West Wallsend, as vehicles on the M1 roar across a bridge overhead, Carrie Barrett fossicks amid more than 100 small steel canisters scattered across the muddy road.

The containers once held nitrous oxide for whipping cream. But they are colloquially known as nangs, with users inhaling the gas. Carrie Barrett, who is also a former police detective, is looking for clues as to who dumped the canisters, and from where.

"The thing about illegal dumping is you can't do it accidentally," Miss Barrett, who works mainly around Lake Macquarie and the Central Coast, says.

"So it involves a high degree of planning and intent. They've actually got to put the waste into a vehicle, drive it to a location and then illegally dump it. You can't mistakenly illegally dump something."

The local RID Squad operates through a program involving the NSW Environment Protection Authority and nine councils. In the past 12 months alone, the RID Squad has investigated 1500 incidents of illegal dumping in the Hunter and Central Coast region. Those investigations have led to more than 150 actions against dumpers.

Some cases have involved the dumping of materials, including asbestos, by commercial operators. But according to local RID Squad coordinator Rob Robertson, about half of the notices handed out to offenders would relate to domestic dumping.

Rob Robertson says dumpers come from all walks of life. Those who have been prosecuted include a university professor, an NRL player, and a local government councillor. As for what motivates someone to illegally dump materials, Mr Robertson says, "commercial is pretty much 100 per cent financial". However, with domestic items, "we've interviewed hundreds of dumpers face to face, and it's not about the money; it's about convenience and laziness".

The RID investigators argue that it is simply not the case that the cost of tip fees is forcing some to illegally dump their household waste.

"Nearly everybody I interview blames the cost of tip fees for dumping," says Peter White, as he surveys the Tenambit site. "But it turns out it's 40 cents a kilo... to go to Maitland tip to get rid of your waste. And the vast majority of stuff could be recycled for free. All the metal that's in here could have been taken to Maitland tip for free.

"A lot of the household waste we deal with, people could have disposed of it over two or three weeks in their rubbish bin."

Then there is the potential financial cost of illegal dumping. Peter White shows a trailer load of items dumped from a local home. He estimates it would have cost $80 if the load had been lawfully deposited at the tip. However, the dumper was identified and copped a $2000 fine and a further $4000 penalty for not cleaning up the mess.

An on-the-spot fine for an individual can be up to $4000, and twice that for a business.

The investigators point out each local government area offers different services for disposing household waste. Jason Robbs says Cessnock City Council is "very generous" with its tip passes, issuing four a year to residents. Each pass allows 500 kilograms.

"So that's two tonnes of waste you can take to the tip for free outside of your normal household bin," he says. "So if you can generate more than two tonnes of waste in your backyard, what are you doing in your backyard?"

The COVID-19 pandemic has contributed to a spike in dumped household waste in the region, as people have spent more time at home. The Newcastle Herald reported in May that, based on extra clean-up costs to the region's ratepayers, incidents had jumped by a third. But Peter White had noted in the Maitland area, incidents of illegal dumping had increased by 70 per cent since the end of February to early July.

"I was a bit shocked actually, shocked by the amount," he says.

Just as the incidents of illegal dumping have increased, so have the reports, according to Jason Robbs, as more people have been out walking and noticed activity or come across waste. And reporting, he says, is so important.

He cites an example from a couple of days earlier, where people had noticed had noticed someone, who ran a yard-cleaning business, dumping materials by a road in the Hunter Economic Zone. They reported it, the man was contacted and fined, and it appeared as though he returned to clean up the site. The rubbish is gone.

"That's good, that's a win," Jason Robbs says, but he believes there has to be a lot more victories.

"I live in the community. I get really frustrated when I go into the bush and see somebody else's waste that they haven't bothered taking to the tip, or they think it's their birth right, because their father and grandfather before them used the bush as their personal waste disposal [site]."

Peter White says the broader community's attitude to waste has to change.

And the former policeman, who also holds a degree in archaeology, says his own attitude to the environment has changed because of this work.

"I've developed a real passion for the environment, I suppose," he says, while looking at the Tenambit site.

"Prior to that, I wasn't an environmentalist by any stretch of the imagination. But when you come to an area like this - and even more so out in the bush - you're driving along beautiful parts of the bush, and you come around a corner and see this."

To report an illegal dumping incident: RIDOnline.epa.nsw.gov.au/#/home

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