Everything and the kitchen sink found on N.J. beaches

Plastics constituted more than 70 percent of the items cleaned up from New Jersey beaches las year.

A mini-keg, a mailbox, birth control pills and even the kitchen sink made their way onto New Jersey's beaches last year and were among the hundreds of thousands of items collected by volunteers looking to clean up the state's shoreline.

While those were some of the more outlandish finds on the beach during spring and fall cleanups last year, items made of plastic continued to dominate the type of debris collected during Clean Ocean Action's 30^th annual beach sweeps in 2015, according to a report released Tuesday.

The report, analyzing the 332,003 items collected at more than 70 locations, attempts to highlight the dirty habits of people whose failures to dispose of their trash properly and the impact that has on the environment.

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"Over the last 30 years of beach sweeps we have seen the types of debris change in quantity and quality, but two things remain the same," said Cindy Zipf, executive director of Clean Ocean Action. "First, litter - especially plastic - is harmful and even lethal to marine life and it is on the rise. Second, you can always count on the small and the tall to volunteer to help clean up beaches. We call that Jersey Pride."

Overall, plastics constituted 70.78 percent of all the items collected during the two days of sweeps by 6,375 volunteers. Just like the previous year, plastic pieces remained the top type of litter in 2015.

Of the 260,624 plastic items collected, nearly 71 percent of them were meant for single use, such as utensils and straws, said Lauren Brajer, Clean Ocean Action's communications and program coordinator.

"This demonstrates that we are a plastic society," Brajer said. We encourage everyone to take our 'plastic pledge' and kick your daily plastic habits."

The plastic pledge is part of the organization's annual summer outreach effort to educate the public about the dangers of plastics on the marine environment.

On the list of the so-called dirty dozen types of pollution, plastic caps jumped up one spot from last year to make them the second most common type of litter on the beaches, according to the report.  Cigarette filters dropped from second place in 2014 to fourth last year.

Glass beverage bottles, which have been on and off the dirty dozen roster over the years, popped back onto the list last year in the last spot.