Last year, 943,195 volunteers in 116 countries collected nearly 32.5 million pieces of trash. In addition to cleaning beaches and waterways, they contribute to the world’s largest database on marine debris by logging each trash item to help inform policy and determine solutions to the growing ocean plastic pollution crisis.

Plastics continue to dominate the top ten items recorded during the ICC. But what is new this year is that for the first time in ICC history, food wrappers were the number-one-reported item along beaches and waterways worldwide. Cigarette butts, which contain plastic filters, traditionally topped the list. Last year, volunteers removed a record of nearly 4.8 million food wrappers compared to 4.2 million cigarette butts. In addition to wrappers and cigarette butts, volunteers collected 1.9 million plastic beverage bottles, 1.5 million plastic bottle caps, and 942,992 straws and stirrers. In total, volunteers removed 20.8 million pounds of trash during last year’s ICC.

Food wrappers are a uniquely challenging problem. They are effectively unrecyclable and there are few comparable alternatives that are more eco-friendly. If we happen to use a plastic bottle, we have the option of recycling it or, even better, using a reusable water bottle. We can opt for canvas bags at the grocery store. We can opt for reusable straws, or we can skip the straw altogether if we so choose. Food wrappers aren’t as easy a puzzle to solve.