With more than 1,000 cleanup sites throughout the state, California’s Coastal Cleanup Day on Saturday featured the most locations since beginning in 1985. Los Angeles County gathered nearly twice as much trash as last year and Orange County reported collecting even more than its neighbor to the north.
The event is billed as “the state’s largest annual volunteer event” and is part of the International Coastal Cleanup held each September. Part of the reason for the growth of California sites is the increasing number of events held inland, both along waterways and trails. All but three of California’s 58 counties participated.
Heal the Bay, which helped coordinate the cleanup for Los Angeles County, reported nearly 37,000 pounds of trash collected by 12,967 volunteers at 72 sites. Orange County had fewer volunteers — 7,267 — but picked up more trash, 44,000 pounds at 40 sites, according to the lead group there, Orange County Coastkeeper.
(Photo by Michael Fernandez, Contributing Photographer)
In tallies from the 75 percent of the cleanups reporting statewide, 53,000 volunteers participated and gathered 367 tons of trash including nearly 36,000 pounds of recyclables, according to the California Coastal Commission, statewide coordinator of the event.
“We had a fantastic day along our coast and inland waterways that flow to the ocean from every corner of the state” said Jack Ainsworth, executive director of the Coastal Commission. “In only three hours, tens of thousands of Californians removed hundreds of tons of trash from our environment. It’s truly amazing what we can accomplish when we work together to protect our coast and ocean.”
Most unusual
So many oddities are collected that the Coastal Commission now runs a Most Unusual Item contest. In Southern California, the winner was a Coca Cola can from 1963 picked up in Los Angeles County. In Northern California, the honor went to a painting of a marsh … found in a Marin County marsh.
Heal the Bay reported picking up chainsaws, wedding rings and live mice, although few details were immediately available about the rodents.
“The mice were found at Malibu Surfrider Beach,” said Heal the Bay spokesman Matthew King. “All I know is that they were ‘rescued’ from 3 separate glass bottles.”
One of the larger cleanups took place at Crystal Cove State Park in Newport Beach, where 385 volunteers who removed 334 pounds of trash.
Countywide breakdowns of the type of trash gathered were not yet available on Monday, but among the top items gathered at Dana Point’s Salt Creek Beach were plastic straws (925), plastic bottles caps (750), cigarette butts (161), plastic food wrappers (150) and plastic bottles (115), according to Rick Erkeneff, chairman of the South Orange County Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation.
Citing past cleanup data, the Coastal Commission reports that “75 percent of the debris that volunteers removed today was composed of plastic, a material that never completely biodegrades and has numerous harmful consequences in the environment. Plastic debris can kill wildlife, leach toxins into the environment, and even introduce them into the food chain.”
Participants in the cleanup can fill out a short Coastal Cleanup Survey at coast4u.org and receive a free taco from Rubios as well as be entered into a drawing for prizes.