If you visit a California beach, you might see items strewn along the shoreline that just aren’t sand, waves, and sea life.
Environmental group Ocean Conservancy has seen it all when it comes to beach litter, but some objects show up with surprising regularity during annual global beach cleanup events.
And, one item has topped the list of most frequently found unwanted items for nearly four decades.
“We still see the same kinds of single-use plastics, wrappers, cigarette butts, bottle caps, bags, take-out food containers,” said Nick Mallos of the Ocean Conservancy.
Here are the top five objects collected from California beaches in the Ocean Conservancy’s 2022 report.
No. 5: Plastic bottles for beverages (15,784)
No. 4: Metal caps (16,919)
No. 3: Plastic bottle caps (24,949)
No. 2: Food packaging (68,214)
No. 1: cigarette butts (125,157)
Cigarette butts, which contain plastic filters, have been ranked No. 1 for all but one of the past 38 years.
Other common items found off the California coast included straws (13,291), plastic grocery bags (14,000), glass drink bottles (10,559) and drink cans (12,770).
These are all items that are used briefly and then discarded.
“Certainly enjoy your drinks, enjoy your food,” Mallos said. “Can you make packaging decisions that don’t have an impact if they’re lost in the environment? And second, you usually have a bag with it: you take one piece, you take five. It leaves just a little beach cleaner.” than how you found it.”
California has some of the toughest plastics laws in the nation, including SB 54. The bill, the Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act, signed into law in 2022, marks the culmination of an effort to require all single-use packaging to be recyclable or compostable.