Food and Drink Packaging Dominates Beach Litter Worldwide

Many people believe that plastic found on beaches has travelled from distant places, carried by vessels, industrial facilities or ocean currents.

That perception has shaped much of the debate over where clean-up efforts should be directed.

However, new research points to a different explanation.

After combining beach litter surveys from around the world and classifying waste according to each item's purpose, researchers found that one group was dominant everywhere: food and drink packaging.

A global beach litter audit

In a new University of Plymouth analysis, researchers assembled over 5,000 beach litter surveys to create the first worldwide assessment of marine litter categorised by the use of each item.

The pooled information spans seven continents, nine ocean systems, 13 regional seas and 112 countries.

Together, those locations contain roughly 86% of the world's population.

Max Kelly, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Plymouth, led the study.

Kelly devoted years to standardising beach litter surveys collected by teams worldwide that had used differing methods.

The resulting global map delivered a clear finding: food and drink packaging topped the list in country after country, irrespective of location or income level.

The usual everyday items

Plastic pollution from food and beverage packaging placed among the three leading forms of beach litter in 93% of the surveyed countries.

These included the UK and the five most populous countries in the world: India, China, the United States, Indonesia and Pakistan.

Three particular products accounted for much of this pattern.

Plastic food packaging, caps and lids, and plastic bottles all appeared among the most frequent debris items in over half of all countries.

Plastic bags and cigarette butts followed closely behind. Although ranked slightly lower, they were still present along shorelines in almost every place covered by the surveys.

The consistent pattern of beach litter

The striking feature was how similar the results were across vastly different national settings.

Affluent coastal countries and lower-income nations, crowded megacities and small island states all showed the same signature on their beaches.

This challenges the widespread belief that most beach litter arrives from offshore industrial sources or fishing equipment lost at sea.

Along populated coastlines, ordinary consumer goods are the items found most often, rather than industrial or fishing gear.

A previous study examining 12 million pieces of ocean debris found a comparable pattern on a smaller scale. The latest research verifies that conclusion across much of the inhabited world.

Wider implications of the study

The conclusion is troubling for countries that continue to rely solely on recycling and litter collection.

When short-lived packaging makes up most of the material entering the sea, kerbside sorting cannot keep pace at the source or at the point of production.

Richard Thompson, a professor of marine biology at Plymouth and founder of its International Marine Litter Research Unit, is the new study's senior author.

“This study identifies for the first time the most abundant categories of debris at national, regional, and global scales,” Thompson said.

This gives policymakers guidance on both where intervention is needed and which precise products should be targeted.

A 2024 assessment estimated that over 50 million tonnes of plastic escapes uncontrolled into the environment annually, with much of it disposed of through dumping or open burning.

Improving waste collection is beneficial, but it cannot match the sheer quantity of newly manufactured packaging.

Cigarette butts remain a problem

Cigarette butts can be overlooked because they are individually small. Yet every filter contains plastic fibres and chemical residues from whatever has been smoked through it.

Other research has associated even low numbers of swallowed plastic fragments with high death rates among seabirds, sea turtles and marine mammals.

Cigarette filters by themselves amount to trillions of pieces each year.

Plastic bags sit in a similarly uncertain category: prohibited in certain places, routinely used in others, and sufficiently light to be carried far by wind and currents.

Gaps in the available data

Beach surveys have shortcomings. They do not capture events in the open ocean, beneath the water's surface or within buried sediment.

They also rely on people being present in particular locations at particular times.

Regional coverage varies, while the data is strongest in places where surveys take place most regularly.

Some of the most unspoilt and least-observed coastlines were excluded from the present study.

On populated beaches, categories such as fishing gear are also recorded less completely than on remote shores, potentially lowering their worldwide ranking.

From shorelines to policy

The research was completed through PISCES, a £3.8 million Brunel University of London project financed by the UK's Natural Environment Research Council.

Its aim is to turn coastal evidence from Indonesia into findings with global relevance.

“This study shows why plastic pollution cannot be solved by waste management alone,” said Susan Jobling, director of Brunel’s Institute of Environment, Health, and Societies.

The researchers advocate upstream action, including cutting production, redesigning packaging and moving away from single-use plastics where products do not need to be disposable.

The study delivers a clear message: a small, recurring set of food and drink items makes up most beach litter in nearly every country, whatever waste management system is in place.

For governments, the issue is no longer only where rubbish goes, but whether such large quantities of disposable packaging are necessary at all.