Beach cleanups never reflect well on plastics pollution, and a new report from the Surfrider Foundation is another indictment.
The San Clemente, Calif.-based nonprofit group collected 225,270 pounds of trash through 985 clean-up projects in 2023. A total of 34,600 volunteers were involved along 1,376 miles of beach, the foundation said.
Cigarette butts, which have plastic filters, were again the top item collected by volunteers in 2023, with 190,654 removed from beaches. Nine of the top 10 items collected by volunteers were plastics, including 61,638 small plastic fragments, 57,838 large plastic fragments, 51,600 small foam fragments, 44,183 large foam fragments, 41,916 plastic food wrappers, 31,542 plastic bottle caps, 18,444 straws and 14,217 plastic bottles. Only paper/wood fragments cracked the top 10 beyond plastics, coming in at No. 9, with 15,867 items removed.
A total of 29 percent of the total of 746,921 items collected material were large and small plastic fragments.
The nonprofit also said more than 1,300 volunteers cleaned beaches on July 5, 2023, picking up more than 100,000 pounds of trash on that one day. Surfrider selected July 5 as a cleanup date as the group calls July 4 "the dirtiest beach day of the year."
The 985 cleanups held in 2023 were dominated by work in California where 602 of the efforts took place, another 127 cleanups happened in Mid-Atlantic states, 62 happened in the Southeast and 58 in Florida. Washington State had 49 cleanups, Oregon had 26 and Hawaii had 22. The Great Lakes region had 10 cleanups and the Northeast saw 26. Texas had two.
"We cannot simply beach clean our way out of this mess — we have to turn off the tap of single-use plastic production," Surfrider said while releasing the latest cleanup numbers. The report "exposes our society's growing yet unnecessary dependence to single-use plastic foodware, the threat it poses to our ocean."
The number of beach cleanups fell from the previous year, but the foundation indicated the number of volunteers, total weight and number of items collected all increased. "This means that Surfrider cleanups are generating a more significant positive impact than ever before," it said.
A Surfrider Foundation report shows volunteers hit a recent highwater mark of 47,059 in 2019 when they collected a total of 298,932 pounds of trash. In 2022, the year before the newly released numbers for 2023, attracted 20,183 volunteers who collected 143,070 pounds of trash.