Below are some trash "species" that you have likely spotted along our coast and shorelines. Learn why we want them to go extinct, and how you can make it happen!
Learn more about The Problem with Marine Debris.
Why Should it go Extinct?
Since 1989, cigarette butts are the top item collected during California Coastal Cleanup Day, accounting for 34% of every debris item ever picked up. Worldwide, cigarette butts amount to 845,000 tons of litter per year.
95% of cigarette filters are made of plastic (cellulose acetate), the same plastic used to make sunglasses. Cigarette butts are loaded with toxic chemicals, including arsenic, lead, and cadmium. Ingestion of plastic cigarette filters is a threat to wildlife and children, who may mistake butts and other small plastic pieces for food. Eating them could cause an animal to choke or starve to death because the plastic isn't digested. Toxic chemicals also leach out of cigarette butts into our waterways. At concentrations of one cigarette butt per litre of water, the toxins are lethal to small fish, and lethal to planktonic organisms such as water fleas at one-eighth of this concentration. Improperly discarded cigarette butts can cause fires that destroy homes, habitat, and cost a lot of money. Some examples include:
Cigarette filters in the environment will break up into as many as 15,000 microfibers, further polluting our waters and environment with ever smaller bits of plastic that are essentially impossible to remove. One study mentioned that public litter abatement or removal of cigarette butts could cost between $3 million to $16 million for each U.S. city. A specific example shows that in San Francisco, It was estimated that tobacco product waste clean-up cost the City approximately $7.4 million annually.
What has been done so far? (As of May 2023)
In 2019, Senate Bill 8 was signed into law, effectively banning smoking in all state parks and beaches. Individuals caught smoking on state beaches or parks can be fined up to $25. And as of late 2017, 64 cities or municipalities in California have established smoke-free beach ordinances.
How Can You Help?
Don't smoke! But If you do smoke, do not litter. Extinguish the cigarette before disposing it in a trash can. Consider using a portable fire resistant ashtray. Educate smokers and the community about the impact of cigarette butts on the environment and encourage them not to litter.
Why Should it go Extinct?
Americans alone throw away over 100 billion bags a year, which requires 12,000,000 barrels of oil to produce. Plastic bags account for over 10 percent of the debris washed up on the U.S. coastline. Since 1989, plastic bags are among the top five items of debris most often found during California Coastal Cleanup Day. Prior to the passage of a statewide ban in 2016, Californians were using 500 million single-use plastic grocery bags every month. Despite active efforts to expand recycling programs, the recycling rate of single use plastic bags remains around 1 percent. With the sheer number of plastic bags used in California, focusing on recycling alone is not a viable solution.
Plastic bags don't biodegrade, they photodegrade (by sunlight)—breaking down into smaller toxic pieces which eventually contaminate soils and waterways and enter the food web when animals accidentally ingest them. Wildlife becomes terminally entangled. Nearly 200 different species of sea life including whales, dolphins, seals and turtles die due to plastic bags, among other plastic debris items. In 2012, volunteers found 235 animals entangled in marine debris.
What has been done so far? (As of May 2023)
In 2014, California passed Senate Bill 270, which banned thin single-use plastic bags from grocery stores and placed a 10 cent charge on reusable bags and recycled paper bags. Implementation of this law was paused for two years to wait for its future to be decided as a voter referendum in the November 2016 election, when Californians passed Proposition 67 and allowed the bag ban to take effect. In that time, and even before the statewide ban took effect (but after multiple local bans had been in place), the amount of plastic bag litter on the shorelines of California dropped from close to 9 percent of all debris removed in 2010 to 1.3 percent in 2017. Plastic bag use and litter rebounded somewhat during the height of Covid, but has remained a relatively small proportion of trash in California's environment.
How Can You Help?
Bring a bag with you when you go to the store instead of accepting a paper or plastic bag. If don't have a bag with you, ask yourself if you really need a bag for the item purchased. Give reusable bags to your friends and family. They make great gifts! And spread the word by refusing to accept plastic bags from cashiers and store owners.
Why Should it go Extinct?
Expanded polystyrene foam (commonly known by the brand name "styrofoam") is dangerous to both the environment and humans. Styrofoam cups break apart easily, but never completely break down, with the foam beads persisting in the environment for hundreds of years. Styrofoam cups are made from a type of plastic called polystyrene. The International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified styrene as a "possible carcinogen." When a styrofoam cup is heated, this toxic chemical leaches out into our drink.
What has been done so far? (As of May 2023)
There are currently 131 local ordinances that have banned polystyrene in some form or another, most often through restrictions on takeout foam foodware from restaurants. In 2022, SB 54, California's Circular Economy Act, passed, requiring that all expanded polystyrene produced, sold, or distributed in California be recycled at a minimum of 25 percent. Under the law, if that target is not reached, this type of plastic will be banned from packaging products in the state. (See LA Times story)
How Can You Help?
Refuse this item! You can choose not to purchase food that comes in foam. If you're planning on takeout, check with the restaurant first and ask about the material they use to package their food. Patronize restaurants that use more sustainable materials. When at a restaurant that has durable dishes for eat-in customers, why not take a load off and eat there? For take-out, how about bringing your own reusable mug?
Why Should it go Extinct?
Since 1988, volunteers picked up almost one million plastic straws on California Coastal Cleanup Day. Straws are the sixth most commonly found litter. Due to its durability, buoyancy, and ability to accumulate and concentrate toxins present in the ocean, plastic is especially harmful to marine life.
What has been done so far? (As of May 2023)
A 2017 viral video of a sea turtle with a plastic straw stuck in its nose helped raise awareness about the potential harm from plastic straws. Thanks to State Assembly Bill 1844, since 2019, full-service restaurants in California can only give single use plastic straws if they are requested by the customer. Some local governments have taken it a step further with outright single use plastic straw bans, including the cities of Del Mar, Malibu, Santa Monica, and San Francisco. In addition, a number of major restaurants no longer provide plastic straws to customers.
How Can You Help?
Do you really need a straw? It's likely that you don't. That straw you used for one meal will be trash forever, so instead why not just skip it? Still feel like you need a straw? There are reusable alternatives to single use plastic straws, including straws made of glass or metal. Straws can also be made from a wide range of biodegradable materials such as paper, bamboo, hay, and sugarcane. You can encourage your favorite restaurants to start purchasing straws made from one of these biodegradable alternatives instead of plastic.
Why Should it go Extinct?
Fishing line that is improperly disposed of, broken, or abandoned in the environment can entangle and kill wildlife and cause boat damage. Since the line is not biodegradable it can remain in the environment for many years. Wildlife that become entangled in line may suffer loss of limbs and even death from infection. Nets and fishing line can obstruct boat propellers, particularly when gear is discarded around boat ramps and marinas. Countless animals representing over 200 different species have been killed by abandoned or lost fishing gear.
What has been done so far? (As of June 2023)
The California State Parks and the California Coastal Commission's Boating Clean and Green program, in partnership with the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, NOAA Marine Debris Program, and the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation, and many local partners, have placed recycling containers at various locations throughout the State. Since 2011, the program has installed 350 recycling bins and recycled 3,240 pounds of fishing line.
How Can You Help?
Take the time to untangle and collect your used fishing line. Then put it in the trash. Or better yet—put it in a fishing line recycling container, now found at marinas, fishing piers, and launch ramps throughout California. If you are not near any of these recycling locations, mail your used fishing line to Berkley Recycling Collection Center, 1900 18th ST, Spirit Lake, Iowa 51360-1099. You can also participate in the Stow it-Don't Throw It program by creating simple fishing line recycling containers from tennis ball cans to reduce plastic marine debris. Learn more.
Why Should it go Extinct?
What goes up must come down, and that adage is true of balloons. They may look pretty floating off into the sky, but the harm they cause to animals is NOT worth it. Helium balloons can travel for miles over the open ocean, where they eventually descend. At that point, like other marine debris, balloons may be mistaken for food by animals, causing choking or a false sense of fullness from a stomach full of trash. Eating a balloon can seriously harm or kill animals. Mylar, or foil, balloons have also caused destructive fires after snagging in power lines.
What has been done so far? (As of May 2023)
Signed in 2018, California Assembly Bill 2450 will prohibit the sale of electrically conductive balloons that might float up into power lines to cause fires. Some cities have enacted stricter laws, such as Laguna Beach banning all balloons on public property or at city events, and Solana Beach and Encinitas banning the sale, use, and release of all helium-filled balloons.
How Can You Help?
If you get a balloon, keep a close hold on it. When you're done with it, carefully pop it and properly dispose of all the pieces. Before you take a balloon (such as from a store or at a carnival), take a moment to think about it as something that will be trash within a few hours or days at most. If you're giving a gift for graduation or Mother's Day, consider giving a bouquet of local flowers instead. Decorate for a party with paper streamers instead of balloons.
Balloon releases are NOT cool. Discover a way to celebrate or commemorate your loved ones that doesn't kill wildlife, such as singing a song, planting a tree, or scattering native wildflower seeds.
Why Should it go Extinct?
Expanded polystyrene foam (commonly known by the brand name "styrofoam") is one of the most difficult materials to manage. Its lightweight characteristics and its tendency to break apart into ever smaller pieces easily means that each foamed packing peanut often results in tens, hundreds, or even thousands of small, buoyant, easily airborne bits of litter that are almost impossible to clean up.
How Can You Help?
Crumpled up paper works about as well to protect whatever you are trying to ship, and is a lot more recyclable. But if you must use foamed packaging peanuts, collect them in a bag and bring them to your local shipping retailer for reuse.
Why Should it go Extinct?
More than 125,000 cigarette lighters have been collected during California Coastal Cleanup Day since 1989. Buoyant and colorful, these items are often mistaken for food by seabirds and then fed to their young. They are a very common item found in the stomachs of Laysan Albatross chick carcasses on Midway Atoll, located in the remote island chain halfway between Japan and Hawaii.
How Can You Help?
When your lighter runs out of lighter fluid, throw it away properly! Or invest in a refillable (and classier!) lighter. Even better yet, stop smoking.
Why Should it go Extinct?
Like almost all single-use disposable plastics, a coffee stirrer is used for only seconds but lasts forever. Conventional, petroleum-based plastic never truly biodegrades—it simply breaks apart into ever smaller pieces, becoming more difficult to manage in our environment.
How Can You Help?
If there's a reusable option available (such as a washable metal spoon), choose it! If you're filling up your own cup, add the milk and/or sugar first and swirl it around in a bit of the hot coffee before adding the rest. If you're ordering from a coffee bar, you can usually request that they add your milk or sugar when they make your drink.
Why Should it go Extinct?
These sharp items can be a serious hazard when littered, especially at the beach. We all deserve to walk barefoot on the beach without worrying about cutting ourselves on litter.
How Can You Help?
Dispose of these items properly—in the recycling bin! Cans and their lids are made of valuable resources—mostly either aluminum or steel—that can be recycled back into other cans or made into other useful, durable items. Help close the recycling loop!
Why Should it go Extinct?
Dog poop can contain E. coli bacteria, tapeworm, and other parasites and viruses, contaminating water, or allowing diseases to spread. Studies have shown that the longer dog waste sits around, the more cultured some of these bacteria, parasites, or viruses can become.
How Can You Help?
You've already picked up after your dog. Now, just remember to throw it in a trash bin!
Why Should it go Extinct?
Plastic to-go containers are found littered on nearly every beach, as well as spilling out of overflowing trash cans. Many are hard to recycle. Paper options are available! Or better yet, bring your own glass or metal to-go container from home when you eat out.
How Can You Help?
Refuse this item! You can choose not to purchase food that comes in plastic. Patronize restaurants that use more sustainable materials. When at a restaurant that has durable dishes for eat-in customers, why not take a load off and eat there? For take-out, how about bringing your own containers to be filled?
Why Should it go Extinct?
As handy as these may be around the house, when they escape into the environment, they can be as harmful as plastic grocery bags. They photo-degrade in the sun, breaking into ever smaller plastic particles that become increasingly difficult to clean up. Plastic bags are always among the top 5 items picked up on California Coastal Cleanup Day.
How Can You Help?
These don't have to be single-use disposable items! These bags can be washed out and reused. But when you're really done with it, make sure it goes in the trash can. If you're at the beach and there are no trash cans with lids, pack that trash home where it can be disposed of safely away from the wind. You can also try one of the many reusable alternatives, including cloth bags and resealable containers.
Why Should it go Extinct?
Since we started California Coastal Cleanup Day in 1985, volunteers have removed more than 479,000 of them from our coast and inland shorelines.
How Can You Help?
Recycle—make sure they end up in a recycling container—not on a street, sidewalk, park, or beach.
Why Should it go Extinct?
In 2016, volunteers collected 7,620 plastic utensils in three hours on California Coastal Cleanup Day. A plastic fork may seem convenient for the 20 minutes it's used. But what about the rest of that fork's life? It started out as crude oil sucked out from the ground, was combined with chemicals and turned into a fork shape, was packaged and shipped until finally reaching a store near you. After its 20 minutes of usefulness, if not properly disposed of, the fork may end up in the environment where it will spend years breaking down, releasing toxins, and harming wildlife. Was that process really more convenient than bringing your own reusable fork?
How Can You Help?
Bring your own! There are lots of options for reusable, durable utensils, made from metals or a renewable resource like bamboo, that pack along easily. Some even come in their own holders so they're even more convenient. All it takes is a little advanced planning to pack a truly waste-free lunch!
Why Should it go Extinct?
Better question...why is it needed at all?
How Can You Help?
This is yet another piece of single-use disposable plastic whose value is limited, if it exists at all. Don't use one. If your coffee shop offers one, kindly decline.
Why Should it go Extinct?
Setting off fireworks at the beach can be dangerous when they explode, but leaving behind firework debris can be hazardous as well, as the debris contains flammable and potentially combustible materials.
How Can You Help?
The beach is not a great place for fireworks in the first place; however, if you feel that you really must, be sure to clean up after yourselves! July 5th tends to be one of the dirtiest days on California's beaches across the state—do your part to help us gain independence from trash!
Why Should it go Extinct?
Since the Coastal Cleanup started, volunteers have removed over 35,000 tires; that's enough for 8,750 cars! Tires release toxins as they decompose, polluting the water, air and soil. Discarded tires can act as a fire source when heated in extreme weather. Fires fueled by tires contain toxic chemicals that pose human health consequences.
How Can You Help?
Always make sure that your used tires are disposed of properly—at the landfill or taken back by a certified shop. They also make great swings and can be recycled into shoe soles, wallets, or any number of useful items.
Why Should it go Extinct?
Expanded polystyrene foam (commonly known by the brand name "styrofoam") is one of the most difficult waste materials to manage. It's lightweight characteristics and its tendency to break apart into ever smaller pieces easily means that each styrofoam product often results in tens, hundreds, or even thousands of small, buoyant, easily airborne bits of litter that are almost impossible to clean up. And, just like styrofoam cups, these food containers are made from a possibly carcinogenic, toxic chemical, that can leach into food, especially if heated.
What has been done so far? (As of May 2023)
There are currently 131 local ordinances that have banned polystyrene in some form or another, most often through restrictions on takeout foam foodware from restaurants. In 2022, SB 54, California's Circular Economy Act, passed, requiring that all expanded polystyrene produced, sold, or distributed in California be recycled at a minimum of 25 percent. Under the law, if that target is not reached, this type of plastic will be banned from packaging products in the state. (See LA Times story)
How Can You Help?
Refuse this item! You can choose not to purchase food that comes in foam. Patronize restaurants that use more sustainable materials. When at a restaurant that has durable dishes for eat-in customers, why not take a load off and eat there? For take-out, how about bringing your own containers to be filled?
Why Should it go Extinct?
Since we started California Coastal Cleanup Day in 1985, volunteers have removed more than 527,000 of them from our coast and inland shorelines. They are a blight in our shared communities, and the plastic varieties of these nuisances can break down into ever smaller pieces without ever truly biodegrading, leaching toxic chemicals and causing increasing harm to our marine environment, including our food chain.
How Can You Help?
Reusable bottles are a great option for drinking water—pledge to start using a reusable water bottle or to use it more than you already are. And if you must drink from single-use disposable bottles and cans, make sure they end up in a recycling container—not on a street, sidewalk, park, or beach.
Why Should it go Extinct?
Candy wrappers, chip bags, ketchup packets, and the like are among the top three most common items found on Coastal Cleanup Day each year, making up more than 8% of the items collected. They are lightweight, which allow them to blow easily into nearby bushes, trees, or waterbodies, becoming a blight on our environment. Most chip and snack bags are made of mixed materials like aluminum, paper or plastic, making it difficult for sorting facilities and manufacturers to recycle.
What has been done so far? (As of June 2023)
In 2021, California AB 1276 was signed into state law to prohibit food facilities and third-party food delivery platforms from providing specific single-use food ware accessories and condiments unless requested by the customer.
How Can You Help?
Don't buy single serving items, but if you must, make sure they end up in a trash can with a secure lid. To reduce packaging waste, buy larger sizes or in bulk, or make your own, and pack to-go quantities in reusable containers.
Why Should it go Extinct?
Bottle caps are that aren't leashed to their bottle are easy to lose. They're often made out of a type of plastic called polypropylene, which floats in water and is therefore particularly attractive to animals like albatross that find their food near the surface of the ocean. During 2016's California Coastal Cleanup Day, volunteers removed 41,200 plastic bottle caps. Over 1,751,000 bottle caps and lids have been collected since California Coastal Cleanup Day began, making them the third most common item.
How Can You Help?
That reusable water bottle will work for flavored beverages just as well as it does for water—just be sure to wash it out afterwards. If that's not an option, then be sure to dispose of that bottle cap properly—either in the recycling bin with the bottle, if your city recycles polypropylene (#5 plastic), or in the trash. You can also seek out bottle caps that do not detach from the bottle itself, such as the sport cap used by Crystal Geyser Natural Alpine Spring Water. This cap has no removable plastic bits, stays attached to the bottle, and can be recycled in most recycling facilities.
Why Should it go Extinct?
Aluminum cans—and all their parts!—are easily recycled. But those pull tabs can become a hazard on the beach, injuring children or anyone with bare feet who unwittingly steps on them.
How Can You Help?
Keep those tabs connected to the can, and recycle the whole thing when you're done. Aluminum is one of the most valuable and easily reusable packaging materials we have—keep that material out of the landfill and close the recycling loop!
Why Should it go Extinct?
Six-pack rings can hamper the mobility of marine animals. Once entangled, animals have trouble eating, breathing or swimming, all of which can have fatal results. Plastics take hundreds of years to breakdown and may continue to trap and kill animals year after year. Since California Coastal Cleanup Day began in 1985, volunteers have removed over 68,000 six-pack soda holders.
How Can You Help?
Aluminum soda cans are more readily recyclable that plastic bottles, but those 6-pack holders can be a problem. If you get one, be sure to cut it up before properly disposing of it. Look for cans sold in cardboard boxes instead. Think about other drink options, like your own teas, juices, or homemade flavored waters, and carrying them in a reusable bottle when travelling. Investigate home soda makers if you just have to have the bubbles.
Why Should it go Extinct?
Caps and lids always rank among the top 5 items picked up every California Coastal Cleanup Day. Like all plastic, they will never truly "go away." Instead, they will contribute their broken apart plastic pieces to our environment, with many of them eventually making their way out to the garbage patches located within each of the ocean's five gyres.
Most coffee cup lids are made from #6 plastic—polystyrene (in its rigid variety, it also comes in a foamed type). There is significant evidence that shows that this plastic can leach toxins into food and drink, especially if the food or drink is hot.
How Can You Help?
Bring your reusable coffee mug to the cafe so that you don't need either the lid OR the cup. If you forgot your mug, ask yourself whether you really need that lid.
Why Should it go Extinct?
Glass bottles are a great choice in that glass is readily recyclable. However, glass on our shorelines harms people and wildlife when it breaks into sharp pieces.
How Can You Help?
The waste-free beverage strategy is to bring it from home, in a reusable bottle. If you purchase an individual drink in a glass bottle, always pack it out! Can you use this bottle again? (To hold a homemade drink, to store homemade salad dressing, to display a small bouquet of wildflowers? Click here for some great reuse DIY ideas.) If reuse is not an option, find the nearest recycling bin and properly dispose of this bottle. Don't be the reason someone has a bad day at the beach!
