Thousands of volunteers gathered Saturday with the aim of picking up thousands of pounds of trash and recyclables throughout Los Angeles County's beaches.

Besides beaches, more than 12,000 participants scoured creeks, alleys, storm drains and highways as part of annual Coastal Cleanup Day. From 9 a.m. until noontime, 179,144 pounds of trash and 2,106 pounds of recyclables were removed from 71 sites throughout Los Angeles County, California.

The litter included a myriad of cigarette butts, many bottles, Styrofoam fragments and a home pregnancy test. In addition to this, a few crawdads were found living in a deserted purse.

The event, which has been described by the Guinness Book of World Records as "the largest garbage collection," takes place every twelve months on the third Saturday of September, from 9 a.m. to noon. Starting 1985, when the program was initiated, over 12 million pounds of debris have been collected from California’s shorelines and coast.

Matthew King, the communications director of Heal the Bay - a nonprofit environmental organization - affirmed the Coastal Cleanup Day has grown to the highest degree over the last 18 years, the Los Angeles Times reported. "We started out doing it along the coast. Each year we get more and more inland volunteers," King stated.

The collective effort also proved effective in cleaning up the beaches in Santa Cruz County. ”People of all ages and nationalities” joined the event, according to Jim Littlefield, vice chairman of the Santa Cruz chapter of the Surfrider Foundation. "A lot of elementary and high school-age kids gave us a hand, which is always cool," he said.