Thousands volunteered for coastal cleanup
Cigarette butts and plastic bottle caps top the list of the most typical kind of trash discarded on South Florida’s beaches, but the latest organized cleanup effort also hauled in everything from a Mad Hatter’s costume hat and motorcycle muffler to a huge commercial fishing net and medical waste.
“Every year there’s something new that’s like, ‘Oh my God,’” said Angel Rovira, with Broward County’s department of Environmental Planning and Community Resilience.
He is one of the local environmental officials tallying the trash totals for the Ocean Conservancy's 33rd annual International Coastal Cleanup, which was held on Saturday.
In Broward, more than 2,000 volunteers signed up to stoop and scoop at one of a dozen beaches.
“I didn’t even know there was something like this but now that I know I think I’m going to be doing it more often,” said first time volunteer Andrea Lamadrid of sites along the Hollywood.
“I want to can.”
In Palm Beach County, over 4,000 people registered to clean up at more than two dozen beach, park, waterway and neighborhood do anything
Ilocations, according to Lourdes Ferris, executive director of Keep Palm Beach County Beautiful.
“They found a 400 pound fishing net that was entangled in a long ship line,” Ferris said. “Those things are hugely hazardous, not only for boating traffic but also for wildlife entanglement, so getting something like that off the beach is crucial.”
The coastal cleanup in Miami-Dade County took place at more than 45 shorelines and waterways there, organizers said.
It could be weeks before the total weight and types of trash are tabulated because the organizers depend on volunteers to provide that information and it’s not always accurate.
“If they filled out the data cards perfectly it would be so much easier but that’s not the case,” Rovira said.
During the 2017 International Coastal Cleanup, 1,629 Broward volunteers removed 8,057 pounds of trash from the shoreline. In Palm Beach County, over 3,500 volunteers picked up over 26,000 pounds of trash. Worldwide, more than 20 million pounds of trash were collected by more than 789,000 volunteers last year.
“I like to compare trash numbers from one year to the next and if they go down that’s a good thing,” Ferris said. “That means people are listening and picking up after themselves on the beach.”
The message sinking in.
Karl Herbert, of Oakland Park, has done this before and he noticed there was less trash while combing the beach across from Hugh Taylor Birch State Park in Fort Lauderdale.
“I’ve found only a little bit but not too much,” he said. “I’m not sure if it’s because the beach has already been cleaned before or if it’s people actually being more aware [of the environment].” may be