The International Coastal Cleanup’s global coordinator, Ocean Conservancy, released the 2022 report entitled “Connect + Collect”. It reports that despite the covid-19 pandemic, more than 300,000 volunteers took to beaches and waterways around the world and submitted data through the Clean Swell app.
Interestingly, a Singapore user of the Clean Swell app is included the map of global ICC locations this year – hooray to whoever you are! There were 611 volunteers whose data was included for Singapore, and these were submitted direct to the global ICC database managed by Ocean Conservancy, since we adopted the direct reporting method (see the 2021 post: “The change to coastal cleanups during the pandemic (and beyond)”.
The Clean Swell app had improved to allow post-cleanup submissions which made it practical, as data cards could be used onsite and consolidated by a group before a single submission. My remaining wishlist for the app (which I remind the OC team every year about) is metric units please!
Contributing to the database is helpful as its adds up globally and become viable for analysis, especially in the rise of research interest into marine plastics. In just 2021 alone, at least 27 peer-reviewed scientific papers by authors from 20 countries were published which used ICC data.
Read the 2022 global report here.
News from the International Coastal Cleanup Singapore 