Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water…

The messiest landfills have nothing in comparison to our oceans. But just how messy? How about six million pounds just on the world's beaches messy? This was the finding (after doing a lot of tedious and odiferous counting) on September 15, 2007, when about 378,000 human beings volunteered to clean up their beaches in 76 countries. They picked up over 7.2 million items of human generated trash, reports the Ocean Conservatory.

The Bad News

What washes up on beaches is a fraction of the estimated trash still in the oceans. In order to try and help stop more trash from going into the oceans, the Ocean Conservatory decided to find out what specific items made up the six million pounds of 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. If you want numbers, they have them:

• 587, 827 bags
• 1.7 million wrappers
• 1.2 million bottles and beverage cans (which probably did not make corporate sponsor Coca-Cola too happy)
• 80,000 pounds of building materials
• More condoms than anyone really wants to think about

The Good News

Although all of the trash was undoubtedly the cause of human beings, the good news is that 378,000 human beings volunteered to do something about it. 378,000 might not seem like much compared to the Earth's estimated population of nine billion, but it's a good start.

International Coastal Cleanup Day is set for September 20, 2008. Make plans now.