Europe: coastline waste items by type and country

During the International Coastal Ocean Cleanup day in September 2021, thousands of people in Europe volunteered to collect waste from coastlines. The most found waste items were cigarette butts, with roughly 142,000 collected across Europe. The second most found waste items were food wrappers, with 36,422 found. The largest number of waste items found along European coastlines were in the United Kingdom and Norway.

Number of waste items found along the coastlines of selected countries in Europe during the International Coastal Ocean Cleanup in 2021, by type

Characteristic	Food wrappers	Cigarette butts	Plastic beverage bottles	Plastic bottle caps	Plastic grocery bags	Glass beverage bottles	Beverage cans	Straws and stirrers	Plastic cups and plates	Other trash*
-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-

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Release date

September 2022

More information

Region

Europe

Survey time period

September 2021

Supplementary notes

Number of volunteers per country:
United Kingdom - 6,586; Norway - 22,867; Germany - 1,810; Spain - 1,878; Italy - 1,292; Portugal - 673.

* Other trash refers to items that are collected by volunteers using the Clean Swell mobile app that do not fall in a specific category, such as indiscernible plastic pieces, clothing or metal pieces.

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