SANTA MONICA, Calif. — For the first time in 30 years, cigarette butts are no longer the top coastal trash item collected, according to the latest report from the Ocean Conservancy based on data collected during coastal cleanups.

Food wrapping pollution has taken the number one spot.

This year marks the 35th year of the Ocean Conservancy's international coastal cleanups, despite the lack of large group cleanups due to the pandemic.

George Leonard is the chief scientist at the Ocean Conservancy.

“We are not giving up on cleanups. We just have a modified approach. Same type of deal as before. We will clean up the beach; report all the data [in particular using the Clean Swell app]. Cleaning up separately, but together,” he said.

The Clean Swell app, launched in 2015, brings cleanups into the 21st Century by making it easier for folks to log picked up items. The app also improves the data workflow.

“There's no lag time that we've typically had with the manual entering of the data,” explained Leonard. “We analyze those data and we roll them up so people can get a sense of both the global numbers, the numbers within different countries, and in the case of the United States, we have a breakdown by individual states as well.”

The Ocean Conservancy’s recently published report based on 2019 data, showed that food wrapping pollution is on the rise.

“Cigarette butts have always been at the top of the list,” said Leonard. “This year food wrappers have now eclipsed cigarette butts. Cigarette butts are still number two!”

Food wrappers had already represented a huge portion of plastic pollution found in our oceans, and now with more people using food delivery services during the pandemic, numbers are expected to rise.

“We know that there's been a massive increase in single use plastics associated with the pandemic,” said Leonard. “And then the other thing, of course, that's happening is PPE [pandemic-related masks, gloves, etc.]. We have added PPE to the data card and to the Clean Swell app, and we're really hoping that we can actually get some quantitative data on those materials.” 

Leonard explained that food packaging can be particularly tricky for recycling.

“Some [of the food packaging items] have a metal layer and a plastic layer that makes them impossible to recycle,” he said. “So, we need to simplify the kinds of materials that we're using in food packaging so that it actually can become recyclable.”

Although the traditional large coastal cleanups are not feasible during the pandemic, Leonard said it is imperative we continue to collect data and log pollution and going in smaller family-based groups is still encouraged.

“When the sky was bright orange and really, really otherworldly it was a real gut punch that this isn't just some sort of academic science kind of problem,” said Leonard. “This is a real problem that we're all living with. We need to stare it down and solve it.”

CORRECTION: In an earlier version of this story, it was incorrectly stated that “over 5 million” items were collected on a single day. This has been updated to reflect that “nearly 5 million” items were collected on a single day. (October 15, 2020)