Voodoo Doll, Dictionary, Bra Found Among Jersey Shore Trash: See List

NEW JERSEY — An American Dream Mall wristband, 2019 National World Series Cup, kids’ winter coat, voodoo doll and half a bagel were some of the wackiest finds that beach clean-up volunteers found down the shore last year.

It’s part of a laundry list of hundreds of items discovered by environmental nonprofit Clean Ocean Action, which listed its rarer finds as part of the 2023 Beach Sweeps Report released last week.

"By removing, tallying, and learning more about litter, volunteers make beaches and waterways cleaner and safer for wildlife and people, and provide evidence of a pollution problem," COA said in its annual sweeps report, now in its 38th year.

The nonprofit then compiles the data into an analysis used to advocate for legislation and ordinances to reduce pollution on Garden State beaches. For example, the "Get Past Plastic" law, passed in November 2020, was the result of an effort by the COA and bars retailers from distributing plastic straws unless a customer asks for one. The same law was expanded to plastic bags and foam food service products in May 2022.

Advocates say the legislation has shown a direct impact on the kinds of trash found (and absent) from subsequent sweeps: plastic bags dropped off COA's Dirty Dozen list (the top 12 items collected)
for the first time since 2007, decreasing by 37 percent from 2021.

Straws and stirrers dropped by 39 percent; foam takeout containers decreased by 38 percent compared to 2022, the report read.

"Since launching the region’s first beach cleanup program in 1985, over 169,675 volunteers have participated, removed, and tallied 8,491,233 pieces of debris from over 75 sites in 59 municipalities and parks along the Atlantic Ocean coast, bayshores, inland rivers, streams, and the Delaware River," COA added.

"By removing, tallying, and learning more about litter, volunteers make beaches and waterways cleaner and safer for wildlife and people, and provide evidence of a pollution problem."

A total 176,206 pieces of trash were collected by over 3,500 volunteers in 2023, according to the report. Among the most frequently-spotted kinds of debris were cigarette filters (6.56 percent of trash), food, candy wrappers/bags (10.15 percent of trash) and bottle caps/lids (13.5 percent of trash).

Some of the most unique beach finds in 2023 included:

• A plaster hand
• Bicycle
• Bra
• Dictionary
• Fireworks
• Golf cart wheel
• Hair extensions
• Ortley Avenue street sign
• Planter basket with flowers inside
• Rubber shark
• Six pineapples
• Small teddy bear
• Urine in a bottle
• Veneer pieces
• Women’s bikini set
• Yarmulke
• “Lots of dog poop bags”
• “Unusual metal parts”

You can read the full Clean Ocean Acton report here.