If North Carolina’s rivers and creeks are its arteries, then human litter is the cholesterol that’s clogging them. Plastic waste is the most common litter found in North Carolina's streams, according to a recent report from N.C. Conservation Network.
That includes cigarette butts, bottles, bags and food wrappers.
“It always kind of shocks me that the number one thing to cleanup is always Styrofoam,” said Grady O'Brien, water policy manager at N.C. Conservation Network. “Folks are collecting thousands and thousands ... and pounds of pieces of Styrofoam. The next big culprit tends to be plastic bottles.”
The N.C. Department of Transportation spends the equivalent of the state Department of Insurance’s operating budget on litter removal, the report found. The department spent $25.3 million in 2023 to clean litter, not including the free labor that volunteers and businesses provided through Adopt-A-Highway and Community Service Work Programs.
Cleanups help remove waste before it breaks down into microplastics — pollutants small enough to cross the blood-brain barrier, altering cognition and causing other health impacts. The state collected 12.2 million pounds of litter during 2023, mostly via government contractors.
But cleanups target litter's symptoms, not the causes. North Carolina law prohibits local governments from regulating plastic products, such as the single-use plastic bags that some retail stores supply.
The report mentions two bills legislators filed this session aimed at reducing plastic consumption and waste, but without additional political support, these bills may not move past the committee stage. House Bill 8, the NC Managing Environmental Waste Act of 2025, received bipartisan support and aims to eliminate single-use plastic foodware in government programs.
“It can seem like an individual thing, like, you know, a piece of trash by the side that you drive by,” O’Brien said. “[The report] to equip folks with some data to say, ‘If you care about this problem, we’ve looked into a little bit and here’s where you can go talk to your local elected officials, talk to your state-level representatives.'”
