We have several local groups in San Diego who have corporate sponsorships that fund volunteers to do beach clean ups. The below does not even take into account locals that do their own cleanups whether by land or by sea. Their data on beach cleanups included 11,895 volunteers who removed 16,534 pounds of trash from the San Diego coastline. Additionally, they collected data on 237,452 separate pieces of trash.
On Coastal Clean Up Day in 2019 6500+ volunteers in three hours cleared nearly 145,000 pounds (72.5 tons) of waste and debris from streets, canyons, parks and the coastline in communities across San Diego County. That was only in 107 sites.
In 2019 there were 196 clean up events with top items found include cigarette butts, EPS foam (i.e. styrofoam) fragments, and common single-use plastics such as food wrappers, bags, bottle caps and straws.
Top areas of beach trash: Mission Bay and Fiesta Island, which just happens to be my neighborhood.
Plastics accounted for the majority of litter.
Of note:
- 72,584 more items were collected in 2019 than 2018. This could be due to there were more clean ups in 2019.
- 20/2% or 47.934 cigarette butts from beaches. Of note that smoking is banned on beaches.
- 14.4% or 34,000 pieces of Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) Foam. Of note, styrofoam was banned in 2018.
- 2.3% was glass. Glass is banned on beaches.
- 4.4% were plastic bags. In 2016 plastic bags were banned at grocery stores.
New for 2019 was the inclusion of Glow Sticks with 1.504 were picked up in 2019. Again these are single use plastic and increasingly more common on the beach.
More information can be found on our Pinterest Board: Marine Debris San Diego