Ocean Conservancy held its 40th International Coastal Cleanup (ICC) effort on Sept. 20 in what it calls the “world’s largest beach and waterway cleanup effort.” Hundreds of thousands of volunteers took to their local beaches and waterways around the world to help clean up the trash that made its way there in a day of advocacy and action.
In 2024, the ICC saw more than 486,000 volunteers pick up over 7.4 million pounds of trash around the world; this year, it expected an even larger turnout. Though officially celebrated on Sept. 20, numerous cleanups took place and will continue to happen in the preceding and succeeding weeks, respectively.
The International Coastal Cleanup falls under Ocean Conservancy’s Trash Free Seas program. Sarah Weller, Senior Manager of the International Coastal Cleanup, said the cleanup is, in many ways, the backbone of the work done at the organization at large.
The ICC started in 1986, when Linda Maraniss and Kathy O’Hara noticed the piling trash around the Texas Gulf Coast and, like others before them, organized a cleanup.
What made this cleanup special, however, was not just collecting trash, but data.
“What these two founders of the International Coastal Cleanup had the foresight to do was to start tracking the types and amount of trash that they wanted to remove,” Weller said. “They coordinated with Texas General Land Office, which today hosts the Adopt-A-Beach program throughout all of Texas, and they went out to some pretty remote beaches and removed tons of trash… and they logged all of these items on a data card that they created.”
Since then, more than 19 million volunteers have gone out and collected over 400 million pounds of trash, according to Ocean Conservancy.
Today, citizen scientists and environmentalists are more empowered than ever to follow in the footsteps of these founders, with an app from the Ocean Conservancy called Clean Swell that allows them to log data with ease. For instance, 2024’s ICC effort of 7.4 million pounds of trash was able to be broken down into “1.4 million food wrappers, over 1.2 million beverage bottles, and over 1.2 million cigarette butts,” according to Ocean Conservancy.
“These are a lot of single-use consumer items that we’re finding not only on the coast, but I should also note too that the movement has gone inland as well,” said Weller, referencing the effort expanding beyond beach cleanups to all sorts of watersheds that found pollution nearby like lakes and rivers. “It’s been really cool, bringing the community together and doing something good for your local waterway, but then the data collection aspect on top of that just amplifies the impact,” she added.
Much of the trash that ends up near waterways is symptomatic of the large waste management systems in countries that struggle with recycling materials like plastic, regardless of whether individuals properly recycle or dispose of their trash. Some of it, however, is simple littering and represents low-hanging fruit that people can be mindful of to improve waste ending up in the environment.
“A lot of items that passed through human hands first, so there is opportunity to intercept those items and dispose of them properly, or just simple actions like not putting items in an overflowing trash bin, for example,” Weller said.
Other places, Weller acknowledged, have volunteers come out and clean up trash at much larger scales — trash that didn’t originate locally, yet still pollutes their natural resources — like islands in Asia.
Given that many of the waste management streams are part of the reason the trash ends up in and around waterways in the first place, and has led to phenomena like plastic accumulation zones around the ocean, another question arises: where does the collected trash from these cleanups go?
“It depends where you are,” Weller said, explaining that partner organizations that host the cleanups around the world ultimately determine the best method of redirection of the waste. “First and foremost, the ICC is about ‘let’s get this stuff out of the environment where it harms countless marine species and even terrestial species,’ and then of course goal number two is let’s make sure it doesjn’t get back out there again, so sometimes in some places that does just look like the debris goes toa contained landfill; other places, there are more options,” Weller added, saying some partners have capabilities to filter out specific, highly-recycleable items like aluminum.
Just as cleanups have both raised awareness nd collected trash and data over the last four decades, Weller said she expects cleanups to continue to be a part of the solution for the next 40 years, too. She also acknowledged that the retroactive effort cannot be the only solution, though, being proactive and diverting trash from the environment must be the ultimate goal.
“There’s a lot more that needs to be happening upstream in order to kind of turn off the tap. But what we love about the ICC is that the data collection aspect really does help us understand where we should be focusing those upstream efforts,” Weller said. “[The data] actually help track effectiveness of policies that might already be in place.”
One example she said loves to point to is “Foam Free D.C.,” a ban in Washington D.C. since 2016 on takeout containers made of expanded polystyrene — also known as foam containers.
“We had data from the cleanups in the district leading up to that year, and now after that [legislation], we’ve been able to still ask volunteers to track these items as you find them,” Weller said. “We’re noticing that there are fewer and fewer of that type of item and materials being collected in our river cleanups nearby.”
As materials like plastics continue to be produced at higher rates, more trash collection, along with data collection to shape and track existing policies, will be crucial in the task of keeping oceans and waterways clear.
