From afar, Howth Head in August is a gorgeous spray of purples and yellows as the gorse and heather bloom in Fáilte Ireland-approved unison.
Close up, the hill's colour scheme is more complex. There are the greens and whites of beer cans, the corroded reds of rusted engine parts, the transparent glint of used condoms, and the shimmering blacks of bin bags.
Dubliners seeking a way around the city's €8 bin charge just leave their junk on the hill in Howth or just about any other out-of-the way green space they can find.
Much of the junk washes into the watercourses and comes to rest in the shallows of the rivers and canals. There isn't an untainted grove of trees from Ballsbridge to Ballymun.
It is bad year-round but in summer the accumulation of household garbage seems to overwhelm the city's councils.
So called "fly tipping" is getting worse, confirms Environment Protection Agency senior inspector Jim Moriarty.
"The nature of illegal waste is shifting from a smaller number of larger sites to a larger number of smaller incidents," said Moriarty.
A confidential phone line - 1850 365 121 - set up by the EPA has received some 2,200 calls over the past year.
In Wicklow, authorities have set up hidden CCTV cameras to try to catch large-scale dumpers. Wicklow County Council has caught one builder who hired an unauthorised collector to cart away his building rubble, and who ended up dumping the load on public land.
Most of the reports to the EPA's 24-hour hotline relate to a couple of black bags dumped in a lane or field, said Moriarty, or to Dublin's other environmental scourge - backyard burning.
About 30 prosecutions have been initiated as a result of calls to the line, he said.
Moriarty said fly tipping became more common after the introduction of bin charges.
The councils are left to clean up the mess.
In Fingal, six litter wardens have the unpleasant job of sifting through junk to look for evidence of the culprit's name and address.
Those caught can expect a hefty fine as well as a bill for the cost of the clean-up, said Fingal County Council director of environment PJ Howell.
He pointed out that tourists often complain about litter. "Every summer there's a number of letters from tourists to The Irish Times complaining about it," said Howell, who added that locals were responsible for most of the problem.
Fingal's wardens issued 1,240 on-the-spot fines last year - up from 608 in 2005, and according to council statistics, heavily littered areas dropped from
63 per cent in 2005 to 48 per cent in 2006.
Still, it's open season for dumpers in parts of the city. In St Anne's Park in Raheny, swans and ducks share pond space with shopping trolleys, broken bottles and half-submerged tyres.
The floating junk is topped by an accumulation of green scum. It's hardly a great backdrop for a summer picnic.
