Litter accumulating in natural and public spaces
#00075
Discarded packaging, cigarette butts and other small waste builds up along roadsides, trails, parks, rivers, beaches and the ocean — harming wildlife, degrading shared spaces, and costing the public hundreds of millions a year to clean up.
#00078Single-use packaging and carrier bags escape into the environment
Lightweight single-use items — carrier bags, food wrappers, cups, cutlery, polystyrene — are easily windblown from bins and vehicles into hedgerows, waterways and the sea, where they fragment and persist. Much of it is hard to recycle even when captured.
#00081Litter sources and hotspots are poorly measured at an actionable granularity
Decision-makers rarely have street-level data on where litter concentrates, what it is, and which brands it come from. Without comparable, location-specific evidence, interventions can't be targeted, producers can't be held accountable, and nothing can be proven to work.
#00079Litter in trails, parks and backcountry where no one is paid to collect it
In wild and remote areas there are few or no bins and no cleaning crews, so even small amounts of dropped trash — wrappers, micro-litter, food scraps, human waste — persist, harm wildlife, and degrade the very experience that drew visitors there.
#00080Land-based litter accumulates on coastlines and in the ocean
Litter from streets, rivers and beaches concentrates along coastlines and in the sea — the ultimate sink for land-based debris. Once there it is dispersed, hard to recover, and lethal to marine wildlife through entanglement and ingestion.
#00077Drink bottles and cans are a dominant share of litter by volume
Single-use beverage containers — plastic bottles, aluminium cans, glass bottles, and caps — are among the most-collected litter items worldwide and can exceed half of all litter by volume in some surveys, with outsized impact on marine and freshwater debris.
#00076Cigarette butts are the most-littered item and a hidden plastic pollutant
Trillions of cigarette butts are dropped each year and only about a third reach a bin. Their plastic filters leach toxicants and fragment into microplastics over years — making them both the most numerous litter item and a persistent contaminant of soil and water.