Monofilament. Easily the most popular and used fishing line. It's cheap, durable, and can be bought in, seemingly, any store that has anything to do with fish, which can be tackle shops or a 7-11 that sells Goldfish crackers.
It also is discarded from boats and thrown on shores and riverbanks with reckless abandonment. This Saturday, there will be a wide-spread mono cleanup of the Tampa area. It's the 15th annual Monofilament Cleanup Day, and they never have a shortage of line to gather.
The United States leads the world in a lot of things: fast food restaurant development, harboring top-level basketball talent, celebrity gossip. It also leads the world in conservation. No other country can claim to have the amount of industry that the U.S. has and the dedication toward preserving our natural spaces. I mean, the American Model of Conservation is called the American model for a reason.
Hunters and anglers know how to stretch a dollar. We reload cartridges, tie our own flies, repair torn pants (and just about everything else) with duct tape. We make our initial investments, and make sure that we keep them for years in hopes that we can pass something treasured and well-used down to a son or daughter.