According to the Environmental Protection Agency, plastic packaging accounts for 30 percent of the U.S.’s solid waste every year. "During the holiday season, Americans produce more trash than any other time in the year, and a lot of these wrappers will not only clog our landfills, but some of them will also end up in our environment, especially our ocean," said French. READ: Loggerhead MarineLife Center collects enough fishing line to stretch from Juno to Georgia The center will collect candy wrappers and send them to TerraCycle, who will recycle the wrappers since a majority of recycling centers don't accept candy wrappers.

"So although candy wrappers here might be done, there are other ways where we're going to be promoting how to be sustainable this whole holiday season," said French. Last year, the multicounty initiative collected 272,595 candy wrappers with Terracycle with H.L. Johnson Elementary School as the recycling champion. This year, the winning school will have the opportunity to name a sea turtle patient at LMC.