Written by Kathryn Youngblood

Last year was another record-breaking year for our community. In 2022, citizen scientists in 54 countries around the world logged nearly 1.5 million items of litter logged with Debris Tracker.

It does not come as a surprise that plastic once again tops the list of materials, comprising 76% of the total dataset. Top items included plastic and foam fragments, cigarettes, and plastic food wrappers. Recyclable items like plastic bottles and aluminum cans were still in the top 10 litter items.

Organizations that logged the most data in 2022 included:

Data collection spanned a global scale, across different ecosystems and land uses. Debris Tracker was used:

To each and everyone of you that contributed, we are so grateful for your continued support in improving our global understanding of plastic pollution. Thank you for tracking!

In 2023, the Debris Tracker team has big plans to create even more expanded tools to empower local data collection and and analysis, while continuing to build a global picture of plastic pollution debris around the world. We would love for you to be a part of our open data, citizen science movement!