Plastic bottles remain one of the most stubborn forms of ocean pollution, according to new results from Ocean Conservancy’s 2025 International Coastal Cleanup, the massive volunteer effort that removes and records trash from beaches and waterways around the world.
Volunteers collected a staggering 1,338,712 plastic bottles during the 2025 cleanup, making bottles the number one item recorded. They also picked up 885,854 plastic bottle caps, which ranked third.
That is more than 2.2 million bottles and caps collected in a single year.
“I have spent nearly 15 years conducting hundreds of cleanups all over the world, and whether we’re on the remote Alaskan coast or a tropical island hundreds of miles from land, we find bottles and caps at every cleanup,” said Allison Schutes, Ocean Conservancy’s Senior Director of Conservation Cleanups.
“Most bottles are used for mere minutes and yet can last in the environment forever. Our communities, our ocean, and our planet deserve better.”
The problem isn’t only that the plastic is ugly or takes generations to disappear. Bottles and their caps can be deadly to wildlife.
Ocean Conservancy points to research showing that hard plastics such as bottle caps are among the most dangerous forms of plastic when swallowed, particularly for seabirds. Its wildlife database even documents an albatross killed after swallowing a plastic bottle whole.
And unlike some difficult-to-recycle materials, beverage bottles already have established recycling systems: “There’s really no excuse for this,” said Dr. Anja Brandon, Ocean Conservancy’s Director of Plastics Policy. “Plastic bottles are among the most recyclable items out there.”
For Brandon, the numbers point to two failures: the world is producing too much plastic in the first place, and too much of what is produced never reaches an effective waste or recycling system.
Ocean Conservancy argues that bottle-deposit programs, reuse and refill systems and extended producer responsibility laws could make a significant difference. Extended producer responsibility, or EPR, shifts some of the financial responsibility for dealing with discarded packaging back onto the companies that produce it.
Since 2021, EPR policies have passed in Maine, Oregon, Colorado, California, Minnesota, Washington and Maryland, according to Ocean Conservancy. Ten U.S. states currently have bottle-deposit laws, while additional states are considering them.
The International Coastal Cleanup has been running since 1986. Nearly 20 million volunteers have since removed more than 405 million pounds of trash while recording almost 440 million individual pieces of marine debris.
That record-keeping may be as important as the cleanup itself. The resulting database has been used by scientists and policymakers to understand what is entering oceans and waterways and whether policies designed to stop pollution are working. Cleanup data, for example, have been used in peer-reviewed research examining the effectiveness of plastic bag bans.
The next International Coastal Cleanup takes place during September, with the official annual event held on the third Saturday of the month.
Picking up bottles from beaches won’t solve the plastics crisis on its own. But after nearly four decades of volunteers documenting what washes up on the world’s shores, one message is difficult to miss: we are still producing enormous quantities of objects designed to be used for minutes and capable of remaining in the environment for generations.
