Braces, sex pills, fake eyeball among bizarre NJ beach trash

LONG BRANCH, N.J. — Volunteers picked up a record amount of trash from New Jersey’s beaches last year, with plastic items dominating the haul, and bizarre castoffs including male enhancement pills, a set of braces, a glow-in-the-dark condom and a Turkish Airlines hygiene kit found on the sand as well.

The Clean Ocean Action coastal environmental group released its annual report Wednesday on the result of the prior year’s beach sweeps. Over 10,000 volunteers picked up over half a million items along the state’s 127-mile coastline in cleanups held in spring and fall of 2021.

And some of it was just head-scratching, if not stomach-turning.

A hunk of human hair; a full set of dentures (“I TOLD you not to take your teeth to the beach!”); a thong; a used narcan kit (used to revive drug overdose victims); several marijuana bags (empty, of course); a bullet casing, and a fake eyeball were among items picked up.

There also was a parking ticket; a lottery ticket; a glue stick; a mini-refrigerator; a toilet brush; a TV remote control; a Mason jar filled with (we hope) liquor; a plastic monkey, and a set of rosary beads, possibly from someone praying for the cast of characters that left all this behind.

And someone found a message in a bottle.

“We don’t know what it read, although I hope it would have said, ‘Don’t litter,’” said Cindy Zipf, Clean Ocean Action’s executive director.

All told, 513,605 items were collected last year, the most ever since the beach sweeps began in 1985.

“It’s disappointing to see it increase,” Zipf said. “We keep hoping the numbers will go down. And the weird stuff just keeps getting weirder.”