FRAM MED SANNINGEN OM ESTONIA!

There’s a lot of trash in the ocean these days — remember the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? — and plenty of it, often plastics in various forms, ends up littering shorelines. Which item do you think is the most frequently found?

Straws and stirrers

Beverage bottles

Grocery bags

Cigarette butts

Cigarette butts. Although most people may not think of cigarette butts as plastic products, the filter is normally made of plastic fibers. Over the past decade, more than 20 million cigarette butts have been collected across the world in an annual coastal cleanup program.

Nobody likes cigarette butts. They’re dirty, stinky and full of chemicals, some of them toxic. And they are especially unpleasant to barefoot beachgoers. But they are the most common plastic product found on beaches, according to data compiled by the Ocean Conservancy, an environmental advocacy organization.

Each fall, volunteers gather around the world for coastal trash cleaning. Most of the waste is picked up on beaches and along waterways, but divers and people on watercraft also take part.

The trash collectors log what they find, and the information is compiled into a global report, generally considered the most complete record of the types and amounts of plastic debris found in the environment.

Food wrappings, plastic lids and bottle caps, as well as foam takeout containers, are among the most frequently found items. But year after year, cigarette butts top the list in sheer numbers. Last year, the volunteers picked up more than 2.4 million of them, according to a report to be made public Wednesday.