Globally, microplastics (MP) are an emerging concern. With this increasing interest in MP, there are calls for a greater understanding of their presence and impacts. However, environmental MP assessment and analysis is traditionally expensive, labour intensive, and with no standardisation in either sampling, or analysis protocols. Reported sampling methods also suffer from significant infrastructure outlay, have overly specific situations for use, and restrictions on where they can be applied. As a result, we have limited knowledge of MP abundance, distribution, and sources in Australia. Here, we present a rapid and cost-effective method for comparable assessment of MP distribution and abundance in waterbodies of varying morphologies. We visually present the methodological steps for clear communication to researchers and stakeholders. The method allows for bulk processing (24 water samples over 4 days) and consists of sieving, digestion, density separation, vacuuming, staked vacuum filtration (6 samples at a time), Nile Red (NR) staining (30 minutes) and fluorescence photography. We also present a tiered analysis approach, which allows the effort input into the MP analysis to reflect the resolution of MP information required. The tiered approach can be opted in or out at any stage, whilst still being comparable throughout. When comparing tier 1 to tier 3 results, there was a -2% error rate between the NR count and the more expensive Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy count (n45), supporting that fluorescence allows rapid assessment of MP abundance at low cost and is suitable for broad scale MP monitoring. The application of the methodology in NSW involved over 200 samples from 50 estuaries, with MP sampling undertaken in less than 30 minutes/estuary and with the rapid lab analysis of samples averaging 1.5 days/sample.