Volunteers from the Ocean Conservancy spent a single day collecting debris from beaches around the world. What they found is disgusting and disturbing.
More than 375,000 volunteers in seventy-six different countries combed the places where water meets land — ocean beaches and inland lakes and streams — to take a close look at the ocean trash problem. In just one day, the volunteers picked up an average of one hundred and eighty-two pounds of trash for every mile of shoreline. That works out to a grand total of more than seven million pieces of trash weighing around six million pounds.
The most extensive clean-up effort happened here in the United States. Forty-five out of fifty states participated in the one day clean-up. Almost two hundred thousand volunteers cleaned more than ten thousand miles of beach and picked up almost four million pounds of debris. That works out to nearly four hundred pounds of trash for every mile.
Other countries’ results:
- Canada collected 74 pounds of trash per mile
- Mexico collected 157 pounds of trash per mile
- China collected 65 pounds of trash per mile
- New Zealand collected 46 pounds of trash per mile
- Bahrain collected 300 pounds of trash per mile
Some of the trash collected is the sort of stuff that threatens seabirds and marine mammals — abandoned fishing lines, rope, balloon ribbons, building material, wire, beverage six pack holders, and plastic bags. Volunteers around the world found eighty-one birds, sixty-three fish, forty-nine invertebrates, thirty mammals, eleven reptiles, and one amphibian entangled in debris.
The president of the Ocean Conservancy said that the clean-up was a “snapshot of one day… but it serves as a powerful reminder of our carelessness and how our disparate and random actions actually have a collective and global impact.” That wrapper that misses the garbage can today doesn’t seem like much just this second… but every little bit adds up.