Aussie police finally catch driver repeatedly littering street with empty beer cans

The Australian police have finally caught a driver who repeatedly littered a Melbourne street with almost 12,000 beer cans over the past 18 months.

Residents of the quiet street in the city's south-east suburb of Mulgrave would awake three times a week to find two or three rubbish bags containing 30 empty cans.

The driver never broke his strange routine, tossing the rubbish from his moving car between 7.30 and 7.40 a.m. without fail, usually on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Police received many complaints but, until recently, irate residents had been unable to assist their investigation by jotting down the driver's numberplate. "Then last Monday, one of the residents finally had enough," Senior Constable Nick Schnerring told News Limited on Thursday. "We had a breakthrough when several neighbours hid behind bushes and noted the registration and make and model of the car."

Schnerring and partner Constable Adrian Staudt confronted the litterbug on Wednesday morning as he prepared to leave another lot of unwanted rubbish. "Sure enough, we observed the man drive along the street and throw two bags on a nature strip," Schnerring said.

Under Australia's recycling laws the driver could exchanged the cans in South Australia and collected around 850 U.S. dollars.

If the driver consumed all the empty cans he could spend more than 16,000 U.S dollars over the 18-month period.

Police said the driver, in his late 30s, was very apologetic and embarrassed about his bad habit.

He was slapped with a fine but only for sole occasion police had caught him in the act. "This was very unusual behaviour," Schnerring said. "It was very frustrating for the residents of the neat and tidy street. They'd really had enough."