Central American Beaches Are Being Overrun With Local and Foreign Plastic

A Powerade bottle from 2001 was found on Yaya, a Peruvian beach south of Lima. A Coca-Cola bottle from 2002 was found on Robinson Crusoe Island, a World Biosphere Reserve, in Chile. These were the oldest of all the bottles collected.

These discarded pieces of packaging were collected in a new macro-study that looked at the origin of plastic bottle pollution on beaches and cities along Latin America’s Pacific coastline. The research —the first to be conducted on a regional scale, thanks to a citizen science initiative covering 10 countries—combed more than 12,000 kilometers of coastline along the west coast of South and Central America. It found that across the region, Central American countries are most affected by coastal plastic pollution, and underscores the urgency of confronting t