Our WorkMarine Debris: It's Time to Stop Trashing Our Ocean

Trash Travels: From Our Hands to the Sea

Each year, Ocean Conservancy provides a compelling global snapshot of marine debris collected and recorded at more than 6,000 sites all over the world on a single day during the International Coastal Cleanup. The world’s largest volunteer effort for the ocean and waterways began nearly twenty-five years ago with the efforts of one woman, and today works towards global solutions through the cumulative efforts of half-a-million volunteers around the world.

This year's annual report, Trash Travels: From Our Hands to the Sea, Around the Globe, and Through Time, highlights the 2009 data and explains how trash improperly discarded can travel long distances in the water, becoming one of our greatest global pollution problems.

During the 2009 International Coastal Cleanup, 498,818 volunteers picked up 7.4 million pounds of marine debris, in 108 countries and locations around the world and 45 US states and the District of Columbia. Millions of debris items, ranging from cigarette butts to 55-gallon drums and household appliances, contribute to the deterioration of ocean ecosystems and harm humans, wildlife, and coastal economies.

No matter where we live, the ocean is our life support system, providing much of the food, water, and oxygen we need to survive. When we compromise the ocean’s health, we compromise our own. Marine debris also directly impacts human health. Sharp items like broken glass or metal cans cut beachgoers, while disposable diapers and old chemical drums introduce bacteria, toxic compounds, and other contaminants into the water. Marine wildlife suffers from dangerous encounters with marine debris as well, facing sickness and death from entanglement or ingestion of man-made objects. And the pervasive problem of marine debris even impacts economic health by incurring removal costs and reducing recreational revenue, for example.

The comprehensive, long-term body of data compiled by Ocean Conservancy and an army of volunteers each year—the Marine Debris Index—is the only country-by-country, state-by-state, item-by-item accounting of trash on beaches and along coastal and inland waterways. These data have been collected systematically since 1989. Of the items tracked during the Cleanup, the top three items (by number) found worldwide in 2009 were cigarettes/cigarette filters, plastic bags, and food wrappers/containers.

The Marine Debris Index has informed major marine debris legislation like the US Marine Debris Research, Prevention, and Reduction Act, and has also helped inspire changes in the behaviors that cause marine debris. The data have been cited in a number of major reports and plans concerning this global pollution problem, from California State’s marine debris action plan to the United Nations Environmental Programme’s 2009 worldwide survey Marine Litter: A Global Challenge.

Because trash travels, we are all part of the problem—and the solution—whether we live hundreds of miles inland or along the ocean’s shores. This year’s Cleanup report examines the phenomenon of trash on the move to and throughout the ocean, and the resulting impacts worldwide. Cleanup data tell us that an estimated 60-80 percent of marine litter starts out on land. Lakes, rivers, streams, and storm drains, helped by the wind and rain, transport litter hundreds of miles to the ocean. And ocean currents and winds carry that marine debris all around the globe. Trash travels through time as well; estimates vary, but some items may last hundreds or even thousands of years in the water.

The data from the International Coastal Cleanup help provide a roadmap for eliminating marine debris by demonstrating the scope and scale of the problem and documenting trends. Armed with that information, we can work together to reduce marine debris at the source, change the behaviors that cause it, and support better policies to prevent it from causing further harm to our vital ocean ecosystems