One of my neighbors says he never sees any trash when he walks on the beach. His wife who does Pwalk (plog x walk) does pick up beach trash, but doesn’t pick the same amount. A lot has to do with where you walk and the time you walk at. Walking after the beach cleaners, or at high tide, you will not get the same about of beach trash.
So how much beach trash was collected by San Diego Coast keepers last year? Remember this does not count all the other people that pick up beach trash. Since I have started with Clean Swell and somewhat tracked my trash clean up, I have picked up over 1.5 tons (2500 pounds) of trash within the last 2 years in South Mission Beach alone.
Data from San Diego Beach Cleanups
- 91,178 pounds of trash from San Diego beaches and waterways from 2007 to 2017.
- 8190 Volunteers in 2017 that cleaned beaches.
- 2017: 118,018 items of trash, weighing 9,352 pounds total, from along San Diego coastline.
- 2016, 6,333 volunteers removed 174,542 items of trash, weighing 9,399 pounds total.
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2015 Nearly 10,000 Pounds of Trash Removed from San Diego Beaches; cigarettes and cigarette butts were the most prevalent type of debris found (79,083 pieces), followed by plastic (17,342 pieces) and bits of plastic foam (13,970 pieces). For the second year in a row, Fiesta Island had the most trash collected per volunteer in 2015 with 4.68 pounds of trash per volunteer. Fiesta Island also had the most trash removed by overall weight, with a total of 788 pounds of trash collected at that location in 2015. (Times of San Diego)
Mission Bay is known as one of the top three trouble spots.
Resources
2017: at 9 am on the morning of July 5th, nearly 500 volunteers descended upon four prominent San Diego beaches: Ocean Beach Pier, Belmont Park in Mission Beach, Crystal Pier in Pacific Beach and the Oceanside Pier. By the time the cleanup ended, at noon, they had removed over 800 pounds of debris from the beaches. Most of the litter was made up of plastic items, but also included around 7,000 cigarette butts and 947 pieces of styrofoam. (Green Matters)
San Diego Clean Beach Coalition
- 2017
Beautiful MB has monthly clean ups 
H20 Trash Patrol in Oceanside cleans the Oceanside Harbor on paddleboards.
Hands on San Diego: Beach cleaning in Encinitas
In conclusion, that is a lot of trash and 80% of that trash is from the land. We as a community need to address littering as whole not just at the beach.