What is the most common trash collected during cleanups?
Ranked from most common to least common based off of the findings from the International Coastal Cleanup hosted by the Ocean Conservancy:
Plastic water bottles were first created and commercially used in 1947. That means if a plastic water bottle was dropped into the ocean the very first year that plastic bottles were created, it is still floating somewhere and will not be “completely gone” until the year 2397. Even then, plastics do not completely decompose, they become micro-plastics. Because of the many carbon-carbon bonds that are used in processing plastics to be as sturdy as they are, the organisms responsible for breaking down organic compounds do not recognize these unnatural strong carbon-carbon bonds and therefore cannot break these compounds down.