New Tool Shows Lives Saved When We Clean Up Beach Trash

When we clean up trash from beaches and waterways, we save marine animal lives. Now our community can see exactly how many lives we protect with a new tool from Ocean Conservancy called the Wildlife Impact Calculator.

Scientists studied over 10,000 animal deaths to understand how plastic kills marine life. They learned that less than three sugar cubes of plastic can kill a seabird. Sea turtles and marine mammals also die from eating small amounts of plastic trash. This research helped create the calculator that shows the real impact of our cleanup work.

The calculator works by letting us enter how many items we picked up during beach cleanups. We can log plastic bottles, cigarette butts, food wrappers, and other common trash. The tool then shows how many sea turtles, seabirds, or marine mammals we protected. For example, picking up 25 plastic bottles, 70 cigarette butts, and 15 food wrappers protects five sea turtles from harm.

The calculator includes over 20 types of plastic pollution that volunteers have found in beaches over 40 years. Even small cleanup efforts make a real difference for marine animals. The tool can handle up to 9,999 pieces of each type of trash we enter.

Our community can use this free calculator online and find local beach cleanup events through Ocean Conservancy's interactive map. Every piece of plastic we remove from our waters saves marine animal lives.