Ocean Conservancy's 2025 International Coastal Cleanup Finds Plastic Bottles and Caps Among Most Common Items Polluting Beaches Worldwide

Ocean Conservancy released results from its 2025 International Coastal Cleanup (ICC) on August 26, 2026, reporting that more than 630,000 volunteers collected roughly 13.9 million individual pieces of trash from beaches and waterways worldwide. Plastic beverage bottles ranked as the single most-collected item at 1,338,712 units, with bottle caps close behind in third place at 885,854 units. 'Most bottles are used for mere minutes and yet can last in the environment forever,' said Allison Schutes, Ocean Conservancy's Senior Director of Conservation Cleanups, while the organization's Director of Plastics Policy, Dr. Anja Brandon, argued 'there's really no excuse for this — plastic bottles are among the most recyclable items out there,' calling on policymakers to expand extended producer responsibility and bottle-deposit laws. Since the ICC began in 1986, nearly 20 million volunteers have removed more than 405 million pounds of trash from coastlines globally, making it one of the longest-running citizen-science datasets on ocean plastic pollution.