Data from San Diego Beach Cleanups

San Diego Coastkeeper and the San Diego Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation conduct twice-monthly beach cleanups throughout the county to address the issue of trash in our oceans and on our beaches. So far, we have successfully completed more than 170 beach cleanups.

In January 2007, we started collecting information from data cards distributed to volunteers. This data helps us to identify and share information about major pollution sources in San Diego. We upload the information to our interactive beach data site, and these are some highlights of what we have learned from 2007 through 2011:

The total weight of trash collected and volunteerism decreased.

The total annual pounds of trash (represented by the bars) collected by the number of volunteers (represented by the line) in San Diego monthly beach cleanups between the years of 2007 and 2011.

The top ten items found at our cleanups remained similar to previous years.

• Six of the top ten items found are composed of plastic. These items take a long time to break down in the marine environment and pose a significant threat to wildlife, including sea birds, sea turtles and marine mammals.
• We collected 11,000 more cigarette butts than in 2010. Last year’s slight decrease was not indicative of an overall decreasing trend. Oceanside Pier has the most concerning problem with these plastic toxic bombs: volunteers counted 8,799 butts at just one cleanup.
• Styrofoam pieces were again one of the top three items counted. Numbers evened out after 2010’s spike to 25,000; we counted 14,500 pieces in total this year. Highest counts centered on North County beaches at Moonlight Beach, Oceanside Pier and Swamis Beach.
• Coronado Beach has an issue with single-use and take-out plastics. It ranked highest in the number of plastic bags, bottle caps, plastic lids, cups, and straws, and plastic food wrappers.
• Recycling should improve in Ocean Beach. Sunset Cliffs and Ocean Beach Pier had the highest counts of aluminum cans and glass bottles – recyclables associated with alcohol consumption.

San Diego has an astounding trash problem –a fact evident when data from Coastkeeper and Surfrider cleanups as well as information from other organizations and major events, including Coastal Cleanup Day, Creek to Bay and the 4^th of July Morning After Mess, were combined in 2010.

The total number of volunteers and total pounds of trash collected from San Diego’s beaches by other Coastkeeper beach cleanup programs (such as Beach Cleanup in a Box and Sponsored Beach Cleanups) and other San Diego environmental organizations. This data is from 2010.

If you want to read more, download our 2011 beach cleanup data analysis one pager.

Slideshow photo credits include NOAA and Andre Lima.