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What Is the Most Commonly Found Litter on the Beach?

CSEF · 2005 Environmental Engineering

Karen B. Cannon · Hueneme High School, Oxnard

Overview

Objectives/Goals My goal for this project was to find out what litter is most commonly found on the beach and where it comes from so in the future we can stop it from happening, clean it up, and have a beautiful beach. Methods/Materials I choose a plot of land 150' by 150' and every Sunday I went down to the beach to pick up all the trash I could find in that section. I plotted my findings on a piece of paper marking down where I found the paper, plastic, glass, styrofoam, cigarettes, aluminum or other. Results Plastic, a non-biodegradable substance, on average over an eight week period was 35.62 items per visit. Cigarettes was 35.25 items per visit. Styrofoam was 17.75 items per visit. Aluminum was 12.0 items per visit. Paper, a biodegradable substance, was 2.375 items per visit. Glass was .75 items per visit. Other substances (that didn't fit into these categories) average was 2.875 items per visit. Conclusions/Discussion My hypothesis for this project was that cigarettes would be the most commonly found litter on the beach. For a while I was correct. During the fall weeks of my project, the beach was filled with cigarettes but when winter rolled around there were very few. This makes me conclude that there are more smokers on the beach during the fall. My hypothesis was wrong. The average amount of plastic over the long eight weeks was higher than that of the cigarettes. So if the county were to focus on cleaning up the beach they should concentrate on plastic because it's not biodegradable. In order to correct the litter problem I would find out where the litter is coming from. This would include people walking on the beach, litter when it rains that feed to the ocean from the J street canal, and from boats and oil platforms.

Summary statement

Finding out what the most common kind of litter was on the beach so we will know what to concentrate on cleaning up.

Help received

I bribed my sister to help me pick up trash. My Daddy helped me pick up trash too.

Competition history

  • CSEF 2005 Environmental Engineering · Entry S0802

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