Beach sweeps by the numbers…
In 2020, despite COVID-19, we safely held 47 clean ups involving 1,469 volunteers; PLUS, hundreds more individuals and families borrowed our equipment and cleaned up on their own. Thank you for those individual efforts!
Types of trash we find…
Total frequency distribution of beach trash by item for all beach sweeps where litter was counted and sorted, as of August 2017:
1. Butts & smoking related materials (packaging, lighters) – nearly 70% of all beach trash
2. Straws & straw wrappers & stirrers
3. Plastic bottle caps
4. Snack wrappers & food packaging
5. Styrofoam pieces
6. Paper & cardboard
7. Plastic fragments, all sizes
8. Aluminum cans
9. Plastic bags & baggies
10. Plastic bottles
11. Plastic beach toys
Notes
– We’ve counted over 400,000 butts from Tybee’s beach in 3 years and removed tens of thousands more that were not counted; 245,500 have been recycled with Terracycle
– The Top Ten trash items account for over 93% of all beach trash removed