Wildsuits Beach Clean-Ups Environmental Report (2024–2025)

Since May 2024, Wildsuits has been committed to organizing regular beach clean-up actions around Ericeira, Portugal.

In collaboration with local associations such as ALP, and above all with the help of 140 volunteers, we have carried out 5 concrete actions to protect our coastlines.

♻️ 315 kg of waste removed from beaches

In just over a year, we collected a total of 315 kg of waste across five different beaches in the region. Here’s the breakdown of the operations:

📆 Date	Location	👥 Participants	♻️ Total collected	Plastic	Glass	Other (wood, metal, tires, cardboard…)
May 11, 2024	Foz do Lizandro	+30	122 kg	80 kg	10 kg	32 kg
Nov 3, 2024	Foz do Lizandro	30 à 40	40 kg	28 kg	4 kg	8 kg
Apr 6, 2025	Ribeira D’Ilhas	+25	78 kg	19 kg	1 kg	58 kg
Jan 12, 2025	Praia dos Pescadores	+25	38 kg	10 kg	4 kg	24 kg
Oct 5, 2025	Foz do Lizandro	30	37 kg	9 kg	4 kg	24 kg
Cumulative	—	~140	315 kg	146 kg	23 kg	146 kg

The “Other” category includes: wood with nails, tires, composite waste, food waste, rusty metal, soaked cardboard, non-recyclable mixed packaging, etc.

Up to 4.75 million liters of water protected

Every piece of trash removed from the beach represents pollution avoided in the ocean. Based on estimates used by several NGOs and environmental research centers:

1 cigarette butt can pollute up to 500–1,000 liters of water
1 kg of plastic can contaminate up to 25,000 liters through microplastic release and toxins.
Other waste (tires, treated wood, metals, soiled cardboard, etc.) also represents major indirect pollution.

Over the course of 5 clean-ups, more than 1,200 cigarette butts were collected — saving 600,000 liters of water just with them.
With 146 kg of plastic recovered, that’s over 3.6 million liters of water protected, plus about 500,000 liters estimated for other waste types.

👉 Estimated total: 4,750,000 liters of water preserved from pollution.

📚 Sources :

Ecotox Centre (Switzerland) on cigarette butts link
Surfrider Foundation Europe : surfrider.eu
Our World in Data : ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution

What that means in real terms

4.75 million liters of water equals:
- 💧 31,600 showers (150 liters each)
- 🛁 19 000 baths
- 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 6 years of drinking water consumption for a family of 4.

And this is just the beginning

This report aims to document the real impact of each action and to highlight the collective efforts of our community. We will continue to update these figures after every new clean-up to measure our long-term environmental contribution.