COVID-19 has changed so much in our lives, including how we litter. The proportion of single-use food/beverage packaging litter found on Canadian shorelines, for example, nearly doubled last year, according to Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup’s annual “Dirty Dozen” report.
“We were startled to see that single-use food and beverage litter increased from 15.3 percent of all litter in 2019 to 26.6 percent in 2020,” said Julia Wakeling, outreach specialist for Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup, a conservation partnership of Ocean Wise and World Wildlife Fund Canada. “We suspect the change may be one of the many implications of COVID-19, including more people ordering restaurant takeaway and consuming more individually packaged foods.”
Also of note: For the first time in Shoreline Cleanup’s 27-year history, volunteers reported finding masks and other personal protective equipment (PPE) on their cleanups. “We didn’t have a category on our data cards last year to formally track the amount of PPE-related litter volunteers were finding, but we have added one for 2021,” added Wakeling. “This year’s results will be very interesting.”
With cleanups suspended for four months, and then limited to solo and single-household events, Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup saw a 70 percent drop in participation in 2020. Some 15,000 people removed more than 41,000 kgs of litter from Canadian shorelines in 2020 compared to 83,815 volunteers and 163,505 kilograms in 2019. Armed with COVID-safe cleanup guidelines, Shoreline Cleanup hopes to make up for lost numbers in 2021 and encourages everyone to organize or participate in safe cleanups.
“Pollution, especially plastic pollution, is one of the greatest threats facing our ocean, but it is a threat we can tackle together. We all have a part to play,” said Lasse Gustavsson, president and CEO of Ocean Wise. “Plastic has become omnipresent in our daily lives and yet each decision we make at work, at home, at school or out and about, has the potential to have a positive impact.”
“Fish, birds, turtles and other wildlife can mistake litter and plastic for food or become entangled,” says Megan Leslie, WWF-Canada’s president and CEO. “Every piece of garbage we remove from our freshwater and marine shorelines is one less piece that can harm wildlife.”
Visit here to read the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup’s 2020 annual report.
To learn more about the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup, Ocean Wise or World Wildlife Fund Canada, visit ShorelineCleanup.ca, Ocean.org and WWF.ca.