Keep Sugar Land Beautiful will NOT hold our 27th annual Trash-Off on Saturday, April 4, 2020. For the safety of our volunteers, we are following the White House Social Distancing Guidelines.

Ocean Litter (Marine Debris)

• 6 million tons of debris enter oceans every year
  • Weighing about the same as a million elephants!
• Plastics are the most common man made objects seen in oceans
• 269,000 tons of litter float on the surface
• 4 billion plastic microfibers per sq kilometer litter the deep sea

Texas Litter

• 1 in 4 Texans admits to littering in the past year
• 62% of Texas smokers admit to tossing their cigarette butts out of their cars
• Most common litter: food/organic material, cigarette butts, receipts, gum wrappers
• 71% of litter is microlitter, not easily seen on roadways (cigarette butts, straws, wrappers)
• You can be fined $500 every time you litter!!!!
• If you toss more than five pounds, you may have to pay up to $2,000!!!
• If every person in Texas picked up 2 pieces of trash (every month), our highways would be liter-free in 1 year

Sources: nationalgeographic.org; wwf.org; dontmesswithtexas.org