Marine Pollution Bulletin 141 (2019) 119–126

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Marine Pollution Bulletin

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/marpolbul

Baseline

Beach litter distribution along the western Mediterranean coast of Spain T

a a,⁎ b
F. Asensio-Montesinos , G. Anfuso , A.T. Williams
a
Faculty of Marine and Environmental Sciences, University of Cádiz, Polígono Río San Pedro s/n, 11510 Puerto Real, Cádiz, Spain
b
Faculty of Architecture, Computing and Engineering, University of Wales Trinity Saint David (Swansea), Mount Pleasant, Swansea, Wales, UK

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: The amount and composition of beach litter was assessed, during spring 2018, at 56 sites along the coast of
Plastic Alicante Province, on the western Mediterranean Sea. Selected sites covered “natural” (19), “village” (17) and
Cigarette butts “urban” (20) bathing areas and a total of 10,101 litter items was counted in an area of 201,686 m2. Plastic
Coastal management represented the dominant material with 8345 items, i.e. 82.6% of all debris; paper and cardboard numbered 566
Alicante
items (i.e. 5.6%); pottery and ceramics 348 (3.4%); metal 325 (3.2%); cloth 231 (2.3%); glass 147 (1.5%);
Beach debris
rubber 64 (0.6%); wood 46 (0.5%) and other materials summed 29 items, i.e. 0.3% of all debris. Cigarette butts,
45.6% of total items, were observed at different coastal sites: i.e. 1028 units at natural, 1148 at village and 2431
at urban sites. Despite the efforts of local administrations, which enforced cleaning operations at most sites, litter
items were essentially related to beachgoers followed by wastewater discharges and fishing activities.

Numerous research carried out on coastal visitors in Malta, UK, countries end up in the sea; c. 60 t/yr consist of single-use plastic items,
Turkey, USA and Spain, have demonstrated that five parameters (the whose use has exponentially increased from the 1950s (Seas at Risk,
“Big Five”) are the most significant in the choice of a beach destination 2017). A huge annual consumption is observed of cigarette butts (580
by tourists: safety, water quality, facilities, scenery and NO litter billion items), beverage bottles (46 billion), takeaway packaging (2.5
(Williams and Micallef, 2009), and the latter is the focus of this paper. billion), coffee cups (16 billion) and 36.4 billion drinking straws (Seas
The order of these parameters is not the same at all countries; in Spain, at Risk, 2017). In order to apply more efficient coastal management
litter is in third place (Ergin et al., 2004; Williams, 2011) and, at other plans, it is mandatory to know the origin, composition and density of
localities (e.g. the Cape Peninsula, South Africa), cleanliness was the litter at different coastal sites.
most significant factor in influencing beach choice for both local and The 56 investigated sites are distributed along the Province of
non-local visitors (Ballance et al., 2000). Surveys carried out by Ünal Alicante, in the Spanish south-eastern coast (Fig. 1). Surveyed areas
and Williams (1999) showed that the majority of Turkish beach users distribution was arbitrarily selected to uniformly cover the whole
disliked the presence of litter and 30% considered litter as the most length of the investigated area. This includes, from north to south, small
important aspect for any beach selection. Additionally beach type in- sandy beaches, gravel and pebbles beaches with high cliffs and, finally,
fluences the ordering, e.g. safety is not deemed important on a remote other sandy beaches intercalating rocky shores and low cliffed sectors.
beach, but very important on a resort beach. Artificial coast sectors recorded along the whole area, include ports,
Litter accumulation along the coast is a considerable problem linked breakwaters, concrete seawalls, summer houses and condominiums,
to different human activities and causes harmful environmental effects and nourished beaches. Waves, which prevalently approach from the I
on the aesthetic deterioration of beaches (Gabrielides et al., 1991). and II quadrants, give rise to a NE-SW littoral transport (Fig. 1). For
Different litter types are related to land-based sources, especially sig- decades, this area, known as “Costa Blanca”, has been subject to intense
nificant here is the role played by rivers together with people who on tourism due to factors, such as, good weather conditions, presence of
leaving recreational beaches simply leave behind all packaging, bottles, clear and turquoise water, beach facilities, etc. In addition, intense real
etc. that they brought to the beach. Litter also comes from marine-based estate development and construction of houses near the coastline re-
sources, e.g. litter discarded to the sea from ships and afterward sulted in an urban landscape mainly frequented by national and inter-
transported by currents (especially floating items) until it lands on national tourists.
different, and often remote, coastal sites (Lavers and Bond, 2017). Data used in this paper were collected from 03/26/2018 to 04/03/
About 100,000 t per year of plastic waste from European Union 2018. Diverse methodologies were applied at each site, such as beach

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: [email protected] (G. Anfuso).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2019.02.031
Received 16 November 2018; Received in revised form 13 February 2019; Accepted 14 February 2019
Available online 20 February 2019
0025-326X/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
F. Asensio-Montesinos, et al. Marine Pollution Bulletin 141 (2019) 119–126

Fig. 1. Location map showing the fifty-six study sites. Detailed information according to site numbering is indicated in Table 2. Wave rose for Alicante area,
observation period: 2006–2014 (source: www.puertos.es, accessed October 2018). (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is
referred to the web version of this article.)

to the latter, the standard sampling unit consisted of a 100-metre long

coastal sector and the observer recorded litter data whilst moving along
5 m separated transects parallel to the coastline in order to cover the
entire usable beach, from the shoreline up to the landward limit of the
beach (a seawall, dune foot, etc.).
Data was collected according to the EA/NALG (2000) methodology
and inserted into a matrix and, for each one of the seven considered
litter typologies a Litter Grade was obtained ranging from “A” (Ex-
cellent) to “D” (Poor). The final score of each site corresponded to the
lowest grade obtained (Fig. 2). Further, the presence/quantification of a
wide number of litter groups was also assessed by combining three litter
classifications from different entities, i.e. the United Nations Environ-
ment Programme (UNEP), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admin-
istration (NOAA) and OSPAR Commission (Cheshire and Adler, 2009;
OSPAR, 2010; Opfer et al., 2012). Coastal sites, according to their oc-
Fig. 2. Litter Grade (EA/NALG, 2000) by beach type along the study area.
cupation level, included “remote and rural” (hereinafter referred to as
“natural” areas, n = 19), village (n = 17) and urban areas (n = 20) in
typology determination according to the Bathing Area Registration and accordance with the BARE system.
Evaluation (BARE) system (Williams and Micallef, 2009) and litter An amount of 10,101 litter items, belonging to 116 groups, was
characterization following the EA/NALG (2000) technique. According counted at the 56 coastal sites, over a total beach surface of 201,686 m2

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F. Asensio-Montesinos, et al. Marine Pollution Bulletin 141 (2019) 119–126

found in studies carried out on several European beaches (Addamo

et al., 2017), in the southern coast of the Mediterranean (Aydın et al.,
2016; Munari et al., 2016) and in other seas and oceans (Kusui and
Noda, 2003; Nelms et al., 2017; Portz et al., 2018).
With respect to plastics, it should be noted that cigarettes butts and
filters were the most common items accounting for 4607 items (Avg:
0.023 items/m2), equivalent to 45.6% of the total, these proportions
being close to the ones presented for the Balearic Islands by Martinez-
Ribes et al. (2007). The most common groups within the plastics are
cigarette butts (55.2%), hard plastic pieces (8.8%), cotton bud sticks
(also known as Q tips, 6.9%), food wrappers (5.4%), caps/lids (3.2%),
foamed pieces (2.7%), straws (2.4%), film pieces (2,4%), fishing lines
(1.9%), crisp/sweet packets and lolly sticks (1.5%), string and cord
(ø < 1 cm, 1.4%), bags (1.4%) and drinks (< 2 L, 1%). Other litter
groups (> 0.5% of the total) can be observed in Table 1. Litter di-
versity, expressed as number of litter groups at each site, varied from 11
to 59 groups and, the average, was 26 groups per site. Other relevant
information such as number of items per 100 m and number of items
per m2 at each site was also obtained (Table 2).
As regards litter origin, most (86%) comes from land-based sources,
e.g. cigarettes butts, Q tips, food wrappers, paper fragments, film plastic
pieces, construction material, caps/lids, glass fragments, crisp/sweet
packets and lolly sticks, metal bottle caps, lids and pull tabs, foil
wrappers, drinks (< 2 L), etc. Normally, such kinds of items are
transported by rivers, wind, municipal drainage systems or are directly
discharged on the beach by users. A smaller litter proportion (3%) was
linked to marine-based sources related to fishing activities (Fig. 3b). As
an example, the most common are fishing lines, string and cord
(ø < 1 cm), plastic rope (ø > 1 cm), plastic fishing gear (e.g. lures,
traps and pots), metal fishing lures/hooks, floats and buoys. This type of
litter is quite common, e.g. in the Adriatic Sea (Laglbauer et al., 2014;
Fig. 3. Most represented beach litter categories. a) Litter composition and b) Munari et al., 2016). Other items (11%) have unknown source or dif-
Sources of beach litter.
ferent potential sources (e.g. hard plastic pieces, foamed plastic pieces,
cloth rope and strings, clamps, rubber fragments, among others). Sev-
or 300 transects (i.e. a total of 30 km). Litter items were composed by eral litter groups cannot be directly related to a particular source be-
different materials (Fig. 3a): plastic was the most represented (82.6%) cause they can have a number of potential sources, pathways of entry
followed by paper and cardboard (5.6%), pottery and ceramics (3.4%), and geographic origins (Veiga et al., 2016). In addition, these types of
metal (3.2%), cloth (2.3%), glass (1.5%), rubber (0.6%), wood (0.5%) materials are usually very fragmented and are difficult to identify
and other unknown materials (0.3%). Similar distributions have been (Prevenios et al., 2018).

Table 1
Category codes for most common litter items at the 56 sites.
Material UNEP Code Description Total of items % of the total

Plastic PL01 Bottle caps and lids 267 2.64

PL02 Bottles < 2 L 113 1.12
PL04 Knives, forks, straws… (cutlery) 283 2.80
PL07 Plastic bags (opaque and clear) 143 1.42
PL11 Cigarettes, butts and filters 4607 45.61
PL18 Monofilament line 157 1.55
PL19 Rope 142 1.41
– Cotton bud sticks 573 5.67
– Food wrappers 452 4.47
– Crisp/sweet packets and lolly sticks 127 1.26
– Hard pieces 732 7.25
– Film pieces 199 1.97
FP01 Foam sponge 224 2.22
Cloth CL04 Rope and string 71 0.70
CL06 Other cloth (including rags) 79 0.78
– Sanitary towels/panty liners 64 0.63
Glass and ceramic GC01 Construction material 299 2.96
GC07 Glass or ceramic fragments 187 1.85
Metal ME02 Bottle caps, lids and pull tabs 110 1.09
ME03 Aluminium drink cans 51 0.50
ME06 Foil wrappers 95 0.94
Paper PC01 Paper (fragments, magazines…) 440 4.36

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Table 2
Beach categorization. Location and main characteristics of investigated sites: Map number (Fig. 1), site name and location, beach type, number of items per 100 m,
number of items per m2, number of litter groups and Litter Grade.
No map Coastal site (and municipality) Beach Type No items per 100 m No items per m2 No litter groups Litter grade

1 Las Higuericas (Pilar de la Horadada) Village 220 0.052 38 B

2 Mil Palmeras (Pilar de la Horadada) Urban 101 0.020 23 B
3 La Caleta/Cabo Roig (Orihuela) Urban 144 0.035 33 B
4 La Estaca (Orihuela) Urban 51 0.012 22 B
5 Playa del Cura (Torrevieja) Urban 270 0.068 21 B
6 Torrelamata (Torrevieja) Urban 165 0.051 26 B
7 Les Ortigues (Guardamar del Segura) Remote 235 0.064 41 B
8 Babilònia (Guardamar del Segura) Village 157 0.071 17 B
9 Els Tossals (Guardamar del Segura) Remote 238 0.130 54 C
10 El Pinet (Elx) Rural 37 0.014 18 B
11 Tabarca (Alacant) Village 577 0.098 35 C
12 Faroleta (Alacant) Remote 36 0.050 19 A
13 Platja Gran (Alacant) Remote 84 0.123 23 B
14 Gran Playa (Santa Pola) Urban 496 0.078 27 B
15 Calas del Cuartel (Santa Pola) Rural 119 0.050 31 C
16 El Carabassí (Elx) Remote 153 0.037 30 B
17 Arenales del Sol (Elx) Urban 210 0.071 27 B
18 El Saladar (Alacant) Urban 230 0.050 30 B
19 Agua Amarga (Alacant) Rural 688 0.373 59 C
20 San Gabriel (Alacant) Urban 534 0.130 38 D
21 El Postiguet (Alacant) Urban 140 0.025 18 B
22 Serragrossa (Alacant) Urban 205 0.184 41 C
23 Albufereta (Alacant) Urban 92 0.021 21 C
24 Almadraba (Alacant) Urban 90 0.009 26 B
25 Cala dels Jueus (Alacant) Village 186 0.148 38 B
26 Cala Cantalars (Alacant) Rural 327 0.158 25 B
27 Cala Palmera (Alacant) Rural 333 0.162 29 C
28 Cap de l'Horta (Alacant) Remote 135 0.034 25 D
29 Playa San Juan (Alacant) Urban 547 0.057 38 C
30 Riu Sec (Campello) Village 122 0.048 22 C
31 Morro Blanc (Campello) Village 90 0.032 27 B
32 Carritxar (La Vila Joiosa) Remote 75 0.054 29 B
33 El Xarco (La Vila Joiosa) Rural 57 0.033 24 B
34 Bon-Nou (La Vila Joiosa) Rural 63 0.021 22 B
35 El Torres (La Vila Joiosa) Village 222 0.055 21 B
36 Cala Finestrat (Finestrat) Urban 106 0.011 17 B
37 Llevant (Benidorm) Urban 391 0.059 32 B
38 Racó de L'Albir (Alfàs del Pi) Urban 166 0.034 24 B
39 Cap Negret (Altea) Village 21 0.005 11 A
40 L'Olla (Altea) Village 77 0.057 18 B
41 Racó del Corb (Calp) Remote 131 0.118 36 C
42 Morelló (Calp) Urban 126 0.062 19 B
43 Cala de la Fossa (Calp) Urban 115 0.055 15 B
44 Cala Fustera (Benissa) Village 75 0.048 15 B
45 L'Ampolla (Teulada-Moraira) Village 157 0.040 17 B
46 El Portet (Teulada-Moraira) Village 38 0.029 14 B
47 Cala del Moraig (Poble Nou de Benitatxell) Rural 94 0.036 22 B
48 Granadella (Xàbia) Rural 196 0.078 31 B
49 Ambolo (Xàbia) Remote 36 0.026 22 B
50 L'Arenal (Xàbia) Urban 503 0.044 33 C
51 Les Rotes (Dénia) Rural 90 0.066 24 B
52 Marineta Cassiana (Dénia) Village 93 0.036 22 B
53 Les Marines (Dénia) Village 66 0.020 22 B
54 Els Molins (Dénia) Village 58 0.015 26 B
55 Almadrava (Dénia) Village 65 0.014 17 B
56 Les Deveses (Dénia) Village 68 0.014 23 B

Regarding litter distribution and beach typology, village areas were urbanization has also been observed in the Baltic (MARLIN, 2013).
the ones with the lowest litter density (0.046 items per m2), followed by Dealing with Q tips, 122 items were observed at natural sites, 53 at
urban (0.054 items/m2) and natural areas (0.085 items/m2). It should village sites and 398 at urban sites. A low density compared to other
be noted that cigarette butt abundance greatly varied according to Mediterranean beaches (Martinez-Ribes et al., 2007; Poeta et al., 2016;
beach typology, from 1028 units at 19 natural sites (0.025 items/m2), Prevenios et al., 2018; Vlachogianni et al., 2018), despite this, their
1148 at 17 village sites (0.020) to 2431 at 20 urban sites (0.023). This is occurrence should not be ignored since they indicate wastewater pre-
equivalent to an average content per 100 m long beach sector of 54 sence.
cigarette butts at natural coastal sites, 67 at village sites and 121 at A box plot was used to visually summarize and compare litter
urban sites. The positive correlation between abundance and level of amounts at investigated sites (Fig. 4), which indicated a great difference

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Fig. 4. Box plots for the number of items, litter density and number of litter groups. Boxes enclose from the 25% to the 75% of data. Associated standard deviations
and median values are also depicted (implemented with “PAST” software).

Fig. 5. Frequency of litter density (left) and litter diversity (right), implemented with “R” computer program (http://www.r-project.org/).

among surveyed places both in litter density and composition. Abun- should not be ignored. Sites with a “C” grade should be considered for
dance and diversity are so high at some sites (Table 2) that the statis- immediate coastal management action because their low rating is due
tical program considered them outliers when compared with the rest to two principal reasons: the first is the presence of general litter
(Fig. 4a: no 19, 11, 29, 20, 50, 14; Fig. 4b: no 19, 22, 27, 26, 25; Fig. 4c: (500–999 items in sites no 19, 11, 50 and 29, Table 2) - the last three
no 19, 9). Coastal sites had amounts between 0.05 and 0.373 items/m2 beaches in Table 2 have 456, 324 and 348 cigarette butts, respectively.
and presented 11 to 59 different litter groups and the frequency his- The second reason is the presence of broken glass (6–24 items), ob-
tograms of litter data are shown in Fig. 5. Total concentrations of beach served at sites no 27, 15, 9, 22 and 30. Other places obtained a “C”
litter produce a general unimodal distribution skewed to the right. grade because of the presence of general sewage related debris and
Beach litter composition usually varied according to beach ty- gross litter (6–14 items), correspondingly observed in beaches no 23
pology, from natural to urban areas. For example, there are rural and 41 (Table 2). Finally, grade “D” sites had > 25 broken glass (site no
coastal sites where litter composition is very similar to village or urban 28) and > 100 Q tips (site no 20, Table 2). Litter grading was slightly
ones. Field observations indicated that an important factor for influ- worse than the one recorded for the same coastal sites by Asensio-
encing the type and abundance of litter was the number of beachgoers. Montesinos et al. (2019) because previous authors counted litter items
Differences in litter abundance (expressed as items/m2) varied ac- along a 100-m transect parallel to the coastline and not along the total
cording to beach typology: the average content (red dots) is higher in beach surface as in this paper.
natural sites followed by urban and village sites (Fig. 6). Due to the great diversity of litter groups (n = 116), 10 new groups
A few sites obtained an “A” grade due to low litter content and even were created for statistical analysis: cigarette butts, food wrappers,
the absence of some litter categories (sites no 12 and 39, Table 2). Other paper and cardboard, single-use plastics, cotton bud sticks, caps/lids,
sites with a “B” grade show general litter (50–499), harmful litter (1–5 hard plastic pieces, film plastic pieces, glass fragments and foam plastic
items), sewage related debris (1–5 items general sewage debris or pieces. A multivariate analysis has allowed establishment of some re-
10–49 Q tips) and, finally gross litter (1–5 items; Table 2). This quali- lationships between sites and litter. To visualize the multivariate pat-
fication is considered acceptable although its management issues terns among beach litter observations, nonmetric multidimensional

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Fig. 6. Density of litter groups by beach typology (implemented with “R” computer program (http://www.r-project.org/).

scaling (nMDS) was performed on the Bray–Curtis distances (Fig. 7). larger and more dispersed (Fig. 7). Finally, cluster analysis showed the
Sites that are close together are similar in litter composition and the dissimilarity of all coastal sites, according to beach litter content
graph area that links the furthest sites of each beach type is similar in (Fig. 8). Typology and Litter Grade for each site was also observed and
urban and village areas, whilst the area of the natural sites is much different sectors can be identified: Sector 1 includes the most remote

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similar trend was observed along the Catalan coast (NE Spain) by Ariza
et al. (2008). Trends observed at Alicante coast are mainly due to two
reasons: i) the number of visitors, which is greater in urban than other
beaches and, ii) cleanup, which is manual and/or mechanical at vil-
lage/urban beaches, and manual or non-existent at natural beaches.
Relationships between litter composition and beach typology are quite
often recorded but, at places, other factors, e.g. number of visitors and
cleanup days, acquire more importance. Litter composition was very
heterogeneous at natural beaches because the presence (or absence) of
cleaning operations. Lastly, urban and village sites were quite alike
since both typologies had a similar number of visits and cleanup ac-
tions.
The majority of beach litter comes from land-based sources, espe-
cially, gross litter, general litter and harmful litter, beach users being
mainly responsible for littering at the most frequented beaches; this
behaviour has also been observed in other countries such as Cuba
(Botero et al., 2017). Evidences presented in this paper showed that
cigarette butts were the principal litter item found as was reported from
Fig. 7. Nonmetric multidimensional scaling (nMDS) implemented with “R” 2014 to 2016 in the German Baltic Sea coast by Haseler et al. (2018), by
computer program (http://www.r-project.org/). The green, red and yellow dots the Ocean Conservancy (2016) in the USA and Balas et al. (2003) in
correspond to natural, urban and village sites respectively. The maximum dis- Turkey. Along the coast of Alicante, in general, litter quantity was low
persion area for each group has been marked. (For interpretation of the refer- but, at places exceeded 49 items per 100 m-transect.
ences to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of
Some items (especially cigarette butts) principally appeared on the
this article.)
backshore but, the largest quantities of items were generally observed
at the landward beach limit. Efficiency of mechanical cleaning for ci-
sites with litter grades “B” and “C”. Sector 2 includes the group on the garette butts is low (Ariza et al., 2008), and this aspect, together with
left as village and urban areas (grades “B” and “C”) and the group to the their high consumption rates (80.3 million cigarette packs were sold
right, i.e. village and natural areas (grades “A” and “B”). Sector 3 this year in Alicante, www.hacienda.gob.es, accessed October 2018)
mostly consists of natural together with a few village sites with different and the absence of adequate management actuations, make them a very
litter grades (from “A” to “D”). Sector 4 includes areas similar to the common waste on many beaches around the world (Martinez-Ribes
previous sector, but with a greater number of cigarette butts (grades “B” et al., 2007; Oigman-Pszczol and Creed, 2007; Williams et al., 2016;
and “C”). Sector 5 comprises the most similar sites, mostly urban and a Seas at Risk, 2017; Kungskulniti et al., 2018). Environmental awareness
few village areas (grades “B”, “C” and “D”; Fig. 8). should be emphasized to change the behaviour of beach users, along
The cleanest beaches were to be found in village areas, followed by with improvement of current cleanup programs, especially in natural
urban areas, with the dirtiest beaches recorded in natural areas. A areas and at the sites showing poor litter grades, i.e. “C” and “D”.

Fig. 8. Cluster dendrogram showing dissimilarity analysis among sites according to their litter composition, implemented with “R” computer program (http://www.
r-project.org/).

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