Plastic Litter Project: Coastal Litter Mapping

What is considered a Marine Litter?

Marine litter can be considered any artificial anthropogenic or man-made object observed in the images such as pipes, tires, bottles, etc. Objects, that we would like to be classified, are any of the following:

1. Bottles
2. Food containers (tapers), Food packaging (chips, ice cream, etc.), Glasses, food/beverage packaging, Aerosol/spray packaging (bottles), Tetrapack packaging, Packages of medical supplies
3. Plastic caps
4. Plastic bags
5. Crates
6. Various vehicle parts (e.g. Vehicle tires)
7. Lighters, Cigarette packs, Plastic tobacco
8. Balls
9. Umbrellas
10. Disposable glasses
11. Plastic toys, Diapers
12. Cutlery and dishes
13. Mesh sack
14. Styrofoam boxes for catch
15. Boat Balloons
16. Sponges
17. CDs, CD cases
18. Personal hygiene items (eg sanitary napkins / sanitary napkins)
19. Clothing (e.g. Flip flops)
20. Sacks
21. Ropes, nets
22. Boxes
23. Printed stationery
24. Pallets
25. Crates
26. Aluminum boxes
27. Caned food/containers
28. Caps
29. Bottles
30. Glass or Ceramic pieces
31. Building materials (bricks, cement)

Marine litter can be specified mostly by its color and shape. For example:

• lifebuoys have a very characteristic color e.g. orange.
• Car tires have a specific shape and color e.g. round and black.

Moreover, for images including water, the marine litter will be found near the shore and not in the surface of the water.

What if there is a car in a photo?

Since the car is not something of natural origin, and there is also plastic material in its frame, it can be attributed to the group of “Marine litter”.

Can a drone case be categorized as marine litter?

Yes, it can be categorized as “Marine litter”, since it is made out of plastic.

What if there are people in the picture?

In this situation, due to the clothes and shoes that people wear, these photos should be characterized as “Marine litter”.

What if I am not sure if there are marine litter in a photo?

In situations where you are not 100% sure that there are marine litter in a photo, you should categorize the photo as “Not sure”.

Can branches (such as palms or bamboo stems) be categorized as marine litter?

The answer is no because they have nothing to do with plastic litter so the answer is “No litter”.

What should I do in the case of sunglint?

Sometimes, you will come across some pictures that it would be difficult to determine the correct category of marine litter due to sunglint. In such situations, you should pay attention to the shape, color, and size of the potential marine litter object.

Waves at the sea

Note that in some situations, waves on the surface of the water are very similar to plastic litter, but still, they are categorized as “No litter”

Are the white dots in the images with sea rubbish?

The white spots in the water are sunglint and they are not considered marine litter. For example, in the image below the white spots are considered as sun glint.

Is it possible to have images in a larger resolution?

In order to have efficient results, images used by our algorithms must be on specific resolutions (600 x 600 , 200 x200 ).

Moreover, we want to see if going from 600x600 to 200x200 resolution will improve the spatial accuracy of our approach.

Therefore there is no possibility to make our images larger.