Group finds nearly 3,000 tonnes of rubbish on world’s beaches

Volunteers have scoured over 50,000 kilometres of shoreline around the world, finding more than 2,700 tonnes of debris on a single day. Items ranged from cutlery to cigarette butts and plastic bags that threaten seabirds and marine mammals.
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A report by the Ocean Conservancy catalogues nearly 7.2 million items that were collected by volunteers on a single day last September as
they combed beaches and shorelines in 76 countries from Bahrain to Bangladesh.

"This is a snapshot of one day, one moment in time, but it serves as a powerful reminder of our carelessness and how our disparate and random actions actually have a collective and global impact," news agency AP quoted Vikki Spruill, president of the Ocean Conservancy, as saying.

The most extensive cleanup was in the United States where 190,000 volunteers covered over 16,000 kilometres, the report said.

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