Thousands of volunteers wielding nets and bin bags scoured coasts, parks and riverbanks across the globe Saturday.
Photo: Lonely Planet
In South Africa, volunteers took to Durban's beaches as part of the global cleanup operation, while hundreds of Capetonians took part in a strike calling for action on climate change on Friday.
Saturday's litter-picking drive highlighting the vast quantity of trash dumped worldwide, a day after mass international climate protests.
Campaigners took part in World Cleanup Day from Manila to the Mediterranean, as hundreds of thousands of people across the world take part in demonstrations and activities calling for urgent action on the environment.
Young people have been at the forefront of the movement, with masses of children skipping school on Friday for a global climate strike, which teen activist Greta Thunberg said was "only the beginning".
Some four million people filled city streets around the world on Friday, organisers said, in what was billed as the biggest ever protest against the threat posed to the planet by rising temperatures.
It kicked off a week of climate action called for by Thunberg, who was among several hundred young activists attending a climate summit at the United Nations on Saturday.
The World Cleanup Day on Saturday is an initiative that has got millions into the streets and cleaning up litter across the globe since it began just over a decade ago.
While the types of trash collected varied, the common material in the bin bags across the planet was plastic, amid surging concerns over the environmental costs of single use items and microplastics in world waterways.
