International Coastal Clean-Up Day!

by aventura, September 23, 2009 | Permalink

Each year on the third Saturday in September, hundreds of thousands of volunteers comb lakes, rivers and beaches around the world for litter. Last year nearly 400,000 people from 100 countries and 42 US States removed 6.8 million pounds of trash from our waterways.

To honor International Coastal Clean-Up Day, on Saturday October 19th about 30 volunteers; including Team Members from Whole Foods Market Aventura and students from St Thomas Aquinas University, participated in our own community beach clean-up at Hallandale Beach Boulevard & A1A.

International Coastal Clean-Up Volunteers

At our initial glance, the beach seemed to be very clean with no visible litter…

Hallandale Beach - looks pretty clean, but is it?

We broke up into teams of 3-4 people and were given sheets to tally everything we picked up. Did I mention we had to count and tally everything? As we began walking the beach we found that the sand was not as clean as we originally had judged. Actually, in a matter of 3 hours the collective teams picked up over 10K cigarette butts alone. Scary when you consider we were covering a 1.5 mile stretch, a minute fraction of our states coastline.

Many smokers think cigarette butts are small and will break down, but used butts are actually quite toxic. They take up to 15 years to breakdown - but that doesn’t mean they actually biodegrade. Instead, they become tiny filter particles, which clog up ecosystems with even more plastics and man-made junk. Of course, before they break down, butts can also pose risk to animals who mistake them for food.

An estimated 1.7 billion pounds of cigarette butts gum up the world’s waterways a year, delivering nicotine, heavy metals, benzene and other carcinogens, along with plastic fibers. All that nasty stuff in those filters can also enter our drinking water supplies, where it can be tricky to remove (think of second-hand pollution).

A sea-creature crusted lighter pushed in by the tide.

The second item of we consistently found was small bits of plastic. With each wave the tide pushed in endless streams of small plastic bits and Styrofoam. For many Whole Foods Market Team Members who had recently viewed a news clip about the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch‘, the sight was numbing. As Floridians, we are quite proud of our beaches; and many of us were shocked and saddened to see the extent of plastic pollution in our local waterways.

Bits of plastic & Styrofoam flow in with the tide.

These bits of plastic are actually toxic killers. When plastic bottles and trash slowly degrade, they turn into increasingly smaller bits of plastic. Seabirds, fish and turtles mistake these bits for for food which they ingest. As the larger animals and marine life eat the smaller animals, this plastic eventually ends up in the human food supply, too.

Within each incoming wave we found endless bits of plastic entangled with seaweed.

We found many bits of plastic entangled within all of the seaweed we came across.

The data which we collected and recorded was submitted to the Ocean Conservancy. Each year they compile a comprehensive report which details how many pounds of trash were picked up around the world, and what types and sources of litter are impacting our waterways. The results of the dedicated work of volunteers around the globe inspires recycling efforts, and shapes policy decisions from the local to the international level.

Check back here in upcoming months when we post the results of this phenomenal global effort!

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