Sandy beaches are one of the most relevant coastal environments in terms of socio-ecological and economical
value. So, the presence and accumulation of plastic litter determines a degradation of these values, and calls for
management actions for cleaning are required. In this research, we investigated the features of plastic litter
distribution on a Mediterranean beach in relation to size and abundance of the sampled items. Simple allometric
models were applied with the aim to provide a parsimonious tool for estimating the amount and sizes of the
beach plastic litter. The results show effective relations between size and abundance of plastic items according to
the power-law distribution. This relationship could support decision-makers to estimate the total amount of
beach plastics through the application of a simple model instead of more complex models requiring the estimation
of many parameters and the availability of large datasets
