A Million Pounds of Trash Pulled from West Coast and Waterways

The amount of waste removed is equivalent to the weight of 18 blue whales.

Volunteers collected 11.4 million items in all, from cigarette butts to grocery bags to food wrappers.

The same percentage and types of items found along the ocean were found in inland waterway cleanups. According to the U.S. EPA, more than 50 percent of marine debris starts out on land.

Some of the trash that was collected was...

Leaky paint cans, empty yogurt cups and abandoned fishing gear can lead to entanglement and suffocation of wildlife. Ingested trash can also cause choking, blockage of the digestive system or toxic poisoning.

Volunteers collected 1,362,741 cigarette butts in the U.S.

In the U.K. 19,504 fishing nets

In the Philippines, 11,077 diapers.

This information can help planners at local, regional, national and international levels tackle specific marine debris problems.

According to the Ocean Conservancy, "Keeping our ocean free of trash is one of the easiest ways we can help improve the ocean's resilience as it tries to adapt to the harmful effects of climate change such as melting ice, rising sea levels, and changing ocean chemistry ... Life in the ocean will be healthier, more resilient and better able to adapt to climate change in the absence of debris-related impacts."

September 15, 2007, when about 378,000 volunteered to clean up their beaches in 76 countries. They picked up over 7.2 million items of human generated trash. In New Jersey alone, 5,000 volunteers found over 160,000 plastic items. American beaches on the whole averaged about 390 pounds of trash per mile, while the world's beach trash average was 182 pounds per mile.

About a third of all the trash was made up of smoking paraphernalia. This is thought to be because of the crackdown on smoking in public places, especially in America. But most were plastic items.

The volunteers collected and catalogued nearly:

587, 827 bags

1.7 million wrappers containers, lids, cups, plants and eating utensils This is a list of eating and serving utensils.

* Chopsticks

* Drinking straws

* Fork

* Knife

* Knork

* Splade

* Spoon

* Spork

* Cutlery

* Dishware

* Drinkware

1.2 million bottles and beverage cans

80,000 pounds of building materials

And condoms

By comparison, volunteers in neighboring Canada collected 74 pounds per mile and those in Mexico, 157 pounds per mile, said the report. About 65 pounds of trash were collected per mile in China and 46 pounds per mile in New Zealand , island country, in the S Pacific Ocean, over 1,000 miles. Volunteers covered one mile in Bahrain and found 300 pounds of trash.

Vikki Spruill, president of the Ocean Conservancy said the volume of trash collected tells only part of the story. It's the items that are found that tells us about the behavior of people enjoying the beaches and coastlines of the world.

"It represents a general carelessness we have. ... We're the bad guys. Trash doesn't fall from the sky. It actually falls from our hands," said Spruill.

Divers also scoured waters offshore, collecting about 160,000 pounds of debris from cigarette waste and food containers to more threatening items: abandoned fishing lines, plastic bags, rope, fishing nets and abandoned crab and lobster traps.

The end of 2009 third annual Platte River Revival had removed more than 1 million pounds of trash removed from the North Platte River. At the end of last year's event, city officials estimated the two-year running total at about 950,000 pounds. There was no celebration, though. Jolene Martinez, the event's organizer, said in the weeks leading up to the event that she wasn't sure whether it was something to be celebrated. One hand, she said, it's an amazing feat to pull that much stuff out of the river. On the other, the fact that there was a million pounds of trash in a river is nothing to glorify.

The event brought together hundreds of individuals; church groups, government agencies and local businesses for two hours of intense clean up both in and along the North Platte River.

Volunteers hauled more than a million pounds of trash from 1,100 miles of California's coast and inland waterways at this year's gathering for the 25th year of the international cleanup event.

Although final results of the day's haul were not available yet, but organizers with the California Coastal Commission estimated that at least 70,000 volunteers participated at 800 sites from Mexico to the Oregon border, around the San Francisco Bay, and as far inland as Lake Tahoe and the Salton Sea.

The Coastal Commission expects to exceed 1 million pounds of trash and recyclables when the final collection is tallied, most of it floating through creeks and storm drains toward the sea. In past cleanups, cigarette butts have accounted for as much as 40 percent of all debris removed from California's beaches and shorelines.

The trash haul this year included a rare find in Yolo County, where a volunteer working a creek bed found a grand piano. "Perhaps," said Eben Schwartz, outreach manager for the California Coastal Commission, " Somebody was trying to find a quiet spot to practice."