Highlights:
- International Coastal Cleanup Day (ICCD) was established 40 years ago by the Ocean Conservancy to clean up beaches and waterways.
- The goals of ICCD are to encourage communities to remove trash along shorelines, raise awareness about ocean pollution, and collect data to inform policy.
- The top five items littering beaches are cigarette butts, food wrappers, plastic straws, bottle caps and plastic beverage bottles.
- Clean Swell® is a trash collection mobile app that allows users to record litter gathered from beaches and waterways.
- UNESCO designated the 2020s as the Ocean Decade.
This year, September 19, 2026, marks the 40th annual International Coastal Cleanup Day.
On this day around the world millions of people will gather to clean up beaches, riverbanks and lake shorelines, joining this volunteer opportunity to help with the ecological restoration of our waterways.
What is International Coastal Cleanup Day
After the release of a 1986 groundbreaking report on the health of the world’s oceans, the environmental non-profit organization Ocean Conservancy established International Coastal Cleanup Day. The group designated the third Saturday of every September to be a day dedicated to volunteer work to clean up shorelines and waterways around the globe. Since the first International Coastal Cleanup (ICC), millions of people in more than one hundred countries have taken part in voluntary cleanup efforts.
The Goals and Objectives of International Coastal Cleanup
The primary goal of the first ICC was simple: keep garbage out of the water by collecting trash from shorelines and waterways, safeguarding marine ecosystems. Another goal is to raise public awareness about plastic pollution and encourage waterway and ocean conservation. A final goal is to identify the debris and its source to advance government action to prevent these items from polluting the ocean and other waterways in the future.
Importance of Ocean Health Initiatives
The Ocean Conservancy estimates that for every mile of ocean there are 46,000 pieces of plastic debris floating within that distance. The floating garbage endangers marine life and the ecosystem.
Data collected during ICC day cleanups shows that the top five items littering beaches are cigarette butts, food wrappers, plastic straws, bottle caps, and plastic beverage bottles. All these items are plastic, which will not biodegrade. However, plastic exposed to weather and the sun’s rays will break down into tiny pieces which enter the waterways and endanger marine life. Because of the impact of plastic trash on the ocean, part of the OCC initiative is to stop the flow of plastic into waterways by educating consumers and manufacturers about the damage caused by single-use plastic.
How to Get Involved
ICC is all about community clean up efforts and environmental groups around the world now are organizing their events for shoreline restorations. On its website oceanconservancy.org features a map allowing users to find a community beach cleanup in their area. Other organizations such as Surfrider feature similar links on their websites. In addition to maps and links to find a clean up near you, the Ocean Conservancy website lists a host of resources to organize your own clean up, including a clean up “tool kit.”
Finally, a new tool is being used to help record trash polluting the ocean and waterways. CleanSwell® is a trash collection app that provides data to scientists and policy makers to help decrease ocean pollution. Anyone can download this app and use it during Sept. 19 ICC day or anytime.
Progress on Coastal Restoration
According to the website, National Day.com, every year ICC day gets bigger results. In 2018 they reported that about one million volunteers removed more than 23 million pounds of trash from coastlines and beaches around the world. Since its inception 40 years ago, they estimate that 17 million volunteers in 153 countries have gathered about 350 million pounds of debris.
To build off the success of International Coastal Cleanup Day, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) designated the 2020s the Ocean Decade. During this time individuals, governments and businesses are encouraged to keep up the momentum to educate and pursue policies and practices to clean up and conserve our oceans and waterways. UNESCO’s commission mobilizes global partners to use ocean science for sustainable management, under the guiding vision of “the science we need for the ocean we want.”
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