Fort Lauderdale Beach ranked fourth among Florida beaches for litter-related complaints, according to an analysis by Just Bottle, a water bottle brand, that searched Tripadvisor reviews for terms including trash, cigarette butts, sewage, and pollution. The study logged 380 keyword mentions across Fort Lauderdale Beach reviews — the findings have been published via the brand's Instagram account and have not appeared in any other venue as of this writing.
The methodology is direct: the higher the count of litter-flagged keywords across a beach's Tripadvisor reviews, the worse the ranking. Just Bottle did not disclose the full scope of search terms used, the total volume of reviews in the dataset, or the time period the data covers — all variables that would affect how the numbers compare across beaches with different visitation profiles.
Hollywood Beach appeared at No. 7 statewide, with 286 litter-related review mentions — 94 fewer than Fort Lauderdale Beach. The two Broward County beaches represent back-to-back entries in the Florida top ten, placing a significant share of the state's visitor-reported cleanliness complaints along a single South Florida coastline.
The source warrants context. Just Bottle markets reusable water bottles, partly on an environmental platform, which gives the brand a commercial interest in surfacing pollution data. The rankings are based on visitor language in online travel reviews, not water-quality testing, debris-load surveys, or assessments from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. Tripadvisor review volume also reflects how frequently visitors post at all — which can correlate as much with total visitation as with actual cleanliness conditions on any given day.
Neither the City of Fort Lauderdale nor the City of Hollywood had publicly commented on the findings as of publication. The study has circulated on social media but has not been submitted to a peer-reviewed outlet or cited by any environmental agency. A more durable assessment would require an independent audit tracking physical debris loads and water-quality metrics — the kind of data that would let beach managers act on the numbers rather than debate them.
What the rankings may prompt is a practical conversation about maintenance capacity along the A1A corridor as cities move toward fall budgeting cycles. Fort Lauderdale Beach absorbs substantial year-round visitor traffic; whether that volume is matched by adequate cleanliness infrastructure is a question the Tripadvisor keyword count raises without answering.
