The pandemic has inspired people to get outdoors and visit Lake Tahoe. But with the surge of visitors comes an influx of trash and land managers are struggling to keep up with overflowing dumpsters.
Every year, the League to Save Lake Tahoe hosts their July 5 beach clean ups all around the lake. They started tracking data in 2015 and since then, 141,955 total items have been collected which equates to 8,417 pounds of trash.
The top five most common trash categories are cigarette butts, random plastic pieces, food wrappers, food waste, and paper pieces. The amount of litter from every category collected in 2019 has increased since 2015.