Hello,
in my game, they get a routing issue. I tried many ways with old and new saves but always doing the same.
I tested this in a new game without mods and cc. I created a new mermaid and put her on the lot near the volcano. She was able to clean up the trash piles on the land from the environmental cleanup challenge and the trash piles that the litterbugs made with no problem. I didn't get any routing errors.
You could try creating another mermaid and see if the new one can pick up the trash. It might just be that one sim with the problem.
So the only other thing I can suggest that you try other than updating the game as @crinrict has suggested is to delete the localthumbcache file to see if either will fix the issue for you. If neither fixes it, then you could try a game repair too.
Hope this helps.
@pandaa094 @CGrant56 Pretty sure this is caused by the sleeping in water action. Mermaids can interact with trash piles just fine until the first time they sleep in the water. After sleeping in water, they can’t unless you delete the cache.
