Cigarette butts plaguing Grand Strand waterway. What’s being done to fix it?

Sandra Bundy, a Murrells Inlet native, often strolls the MarshWalk to find litter plaguing the inlet: aluminum cans, glass bottles and plastic.

Bundy is a founding member of Our Marsh Counts, a coalition project to locally reduce plastic pollution, a growing global issue.

Based on data collected from 2022 to 2025 in Murrells Inlet, 54,746 pieces of litter were picked up and documented in the South Carolina Aquarium litter journal. Plastic made up 77% of all recorded debris. Of the plastic litter, roughly 45% were single-use plastics.

Kelly Thorvalson, SC Aquarium senior manager of conservation, works across the state hosting litter sweeps and tracking debris in different communities. She joined Bundy’s goal to reduce plastic pollution in Murrells Inlet, but trash often shows right back up if the sources don’t change, she said.

“If you collect data, you can start looking for the sources of those debris,” she said last month at a community Creek Talk.

Bundy and Thorvalson worked to secure a three-year federal marine debris grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 2024 to launch Our Marsh Counts, now into its second year. The project works in tandem with the S.C. Sea Grant Consortium, several local partners and Georgetown County to encourage citizen stewardship, conservation education and the health of the marsh.

In Murrells Inlet, the most commonly found litter is cigarette butts, in line with a global trend. But the second-highest is plastic straws, a type of plastic that typically is in the eighth to tenth range of most commonly found types of litter in municipalities, Thorvalson said.

Collecting data from litter sweeps was step one to determine the types of debris and where they are most commonly found. Now the project plans to roll out an initiative launching this fall: an inlet-friendly business guide promoting the use of sustainable products from businesses and restaurants around the inlet. Businesses can become inlet-friendly certified if they meet certain criteria of sustainability.

An inlet-friendly business program was a recommendation that never materialized from Murrells Inlet’s 2014 watershed plan, but the open opportunity helped secure grant funding for Our Marsh Counts to finally implement it, Bundy said.

The guide encourages businesses voluntarily to become “inlet-friendly” by trading styrofoam takeout boxes for paper or cardboard boxes and making plastic straws only available upon request, for example. Other practices of offering on-site cigarette receptacles or displaying educational materials were proposed as ideas for the guide.

The goal is not to vilify plastics, Thorvalson said, but to significantly reduce the amount of plastics that are thrown away after one use, like plastic cups, silverware and straws.

The inlet-friendly program hopes to significantly reduce the chance for plastics to drift into Murrells Inlet’s ditches, roads and marsh.

“We get a lot of benefit out of that creek, and we need to be giving some back,” Bundy said.

Do plastic bans or reduction programs actually reap results?

Thorvalson has worked across the state with SC Aquarium’s Plastic-Free Waters program to gather litter data, and she has already seen the process of providing data to encourage plastic bans work in other communities.

When businesses withhold distributing plastic, there is less of a chance for it to end up on roads and waterways. In Charleston, where she lives, most municipalities in the county have a plastic retail bag ban, and most of the businesses and restaurants use sustainable materials and are required to only give straws upon request.

“(In Charleston) you just don’t expect a straw,” Thorvalson said. “And people are OK with that.”

Isle of Palms and Folly Beach, both Charleston beaches, implemented a smoking ban. Thorvalson was asked to analyze the data to see if the ban was effectively reducing cigarette litter. Before the ban, roughly 30% to 35% of litter were cigarettes found on those beaches. After the ban was implemented, those numbers dropped to 12% to 14%, she said.

North Myrtle Beach has a similar plastic bag ordinance that prohibits retail stores from offering single-use bags at checkout in an effort to reduce plastic bags making their way to the beaches, ocean and waterways. North Myrtle Beach also just created a smoking ban effective Jan. 1, 2027.

According to a community survey to assess the outlook from Murrells Inlet residents, over half of responders said they would support sustainable business practices even if it meant paying a slight fee for the more expensive materials.

“It’s a change, but we’re hoping that people will be ready for it,” Thorvalson said.