The Ocean Cleanup Survey App

Plastic Monitoring in Oceans and Rivers

Are you concerned about the amount of plastic waste ending up in our oceans? Get involved as a citizen scientist by using The Ocean Cleanup Survey App to help The Ocean Cleanup and the global community better understand ocean plastic pollution. Developed by The Ocean Cleanup’s leading scientists this app is simple to handle and allows you to report to a global database the plastic load in a river or ocean near you using your smartphone. This is the first plastic counting app that enables you to report plastic pollution in real time.

Why use The Ocean Cleanup Survey App? It is fun, it is easy, and it generates important global data for citizens, scientists, and decision makers to move forward in reducing ocean plastic pollution. By using The Ocean Cleanup Survey App you can join our mission to rid the world’s oceans of plastic and become part of the largest cleanup in history.

How to perform an Ocean Cleanup Survey? Download The Ocean Cleanup Survey App, go to a river or ocean of your choice during daylight, and pick a safe survey location such as a bridge with a decent pedestrian area for a river survey or the bow of your vessel for an ocean survey. Next, log in to your account and choose a survey duration. You are now ready to record in real time the plastic items you identify on the water surface by tapping the categories on the screen.

Using The Ocean Cleanup Survey Apps rewarding:

- Contribute to a global understanding of plastic pollution
- Help The Ocean Cleanup understand optimal mitigation strategies for rivers and oceans
- Use our defined categories to count waste items in real time on your screen
- View your results on our global citizen science map

Why do we need Plastic Surveys? Rivers represent a major source of plastic pollution. They are widely believed to be the arteries that carry waste from land to the ocean. With over 8 billion tons of plastic produced to date, a significant fraction of discarded products have been leaking into the environment, entering waterways, and reaching the ocean via rivers. We now know that this is currently happening everywhere in the world and we estimate that over 1000 rivers are responsible for 80% of the global riverine plastic inputs into the ocean. The understanding of waste types and quantitative fluxes is important to better inform interception strategies. The data generated by this a