Rubber bullets, mascara and condoms were among nearly 900kg of rubbish collected from Robben Island's beaches as part of an international coastal cleanup campaign, South African organisers say.
Robben Island was selected for the Saturday cleanup because the former prison island where former South African president Nelson Mandela was incarcerated for 27 years is now a World Heritage Site.
Teams from five schools collected 170 bags of mostly plastic waste that had washed up on the shores of the island just off Cape Town.
John Kieser, South Africa's coordinator of the event, said an estimated 50 per cent of the waste was from ships dumping their rubbish overboard before entering Cape Town harbour. The rest entered the sea via drains before washing up on the island.
"When you consider that it takes 450 years for a plastic bottle to decompose, and 1 million years for a glass bottle to decompose, its clear that we all need to consider our habits very carefully when it comes to disposing of our rubbish," Kieser said.
"The Robben Island cleanup was a complete eye-opener for us and for the learners," said Christina Pretorius of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, which also sponsored the cleanup.
"In among the curiosities washed up on the beaches, rubber bullets, spectacles, shoes, dozens of unused condoms and even neon lures used by long liners, the overwhelming majority of litter was plastic," she said.
One team of rubbish collectors also found a dead shark entangled in fishing line, she said.