About Our Cleanups

Our Cleanups

Our mission is to shape a clean future for the ocean, and protect marine life from being harmed by ocean trash.

Today, as much as 5 bath tubs of plastic washes up in Bohuslän every hour. Already, 94% of seabirds have plastic in their stomachs, and millions of marine animals die every year because of ocean plastic.

This is what we're fighting to stop. And we do it by removing this plastic and other harmful trash from the ocean and coastline.

How do we clean the ocean?

Coastal cleanups

We clean the bays, beaches and stretches of coastline where the most ocean plastic washes up. This way we can keep the coastline clean for all coastal marine life, and remove the plastic before it can return to the ocean during high tides or storms. The majority of our cleanups are coastal cleanups. So far we've cleaned over 200 bays along the west coast of Sweden.

Dive cleanups

Much of the plastic that ends up in the ocean sinks to the ocean floor. So to remove it, we do dive cleanups together with Rena Botten. We target marinas, where there are often large concentrations of plastic and trash under the surface. On these cleanups we find large tyres, bottles, car batteries, fishing gear and much more. So far we've removed over 4 000 kilos of trash from the ocean floor in marinas on dive cleanups.

Cleaning islands

There are thousands of islands in the beautiful Bohuslän archipelago. Islands are often important wildlife habitats for animals such as seals and seabirds. But since they are furthest out in the archipelago, they are unprotected and receive a lot of ocean plastic. So we go out with boat and clean these islands, to remove the plastic so it does not harm marine life, or end up back in the ocean.

Where do we clean?

We focus our cleanups on the north west coast of Sweden, in Bohuslän and Göteborg. This is a "high impact area" for ocean plastic, because of ocean currents that bring plastic here from all over the world. 80% of the plastic that washes up in Bohuslän comes from other countries than Sweden, and every hour as much as 5 bath tubs of plastic washes up here.

What types of plastic do we find?

Single Use Plastic

50% of the plastic we find on our cleanups is single-use plastic. Plastic bags, bottles, food packaging, balloons, take away boxes etc. It's often used just a couple of minutes, but can pollute the ocean for decades, or even centuries...

Fishing Gear

40% of the plastic we find is discarded fishing gear. Ghost nets, ropes, fishing lines, lobster cages and even equipment such as gloves and fishing crates. Discarded fishing gear is a big threat to marine life, which can easily get stuck and harmed by it.

Other

We have learned that you can find practically anything on a cleanup. We find a lot of polestyrene, building equipment, medicine, tanks of gasoline, car parts, tools and clothes. We've even found morphine from Denmark, and space technology...

CleanSea's impact:

250+

Bays cleaned.

250+

Cleanups done.

29000+

Kg ocean trash removed.

Help pull the next kilo!

Join the mission and help pull the next kilo of ocean plastic today with a CleanSea bracelet!