When I was writing TRACKING TRASH and marveling at the magnitude of the marine debris problem, I felt strongly about finding something concrete that I could do–and that readers could do–to protect the ocean. What I found was Ocean Conservancy and their International Coastal Cleanup (ICC) events. If you’ve read TRACKING TRASH, you know about them already.
ICC events are not your run-of-the-mill beach cleanups. Held annually across the country and around the world, ICC events are mega beach-cleanups during which volunteers not only pick up trash, but they count it too. Yep, you read that right … they count it. Every September, volunteers don plastic gloves and comb shorelines carrying a trash bag and a collection sheet. Each and every cigarette butt, plastic straw, food wrapper, plastic bag and bottle cap is recorded on the collection sheet before it is dropped in the trash bag. In the past twenty years, 6.6 million ICC volunteers have removed 116 million pounds of debris from 211,460 miles of shoreline in 127 countries.
That is a lot of trash … but what’s up with the counting? Why count garbage? Well, because the numbers are POWERFUL. Let me give you an example.
If I tell you that cigarette butts are a big problem on beaches, you would probably nod and sigh. But if I told you that during the 2006 International Coastal Cleanup volunteers collected 1,901,519 cigarette butts, you might get a little outraged. And if I went on to tell you that during a one hour cleanup of a 1.5 mile stretch of California beach volunteers collected 6,300 cigarette butts, well, then you might support something like this. ICC numbers provide information, and that information helps citizens and conservation groups and lawmakers to address the problem of marine debris.
This year, I am hosting a cleanup event near my home in central Massachusetts. I am also participating in a special raffle for Massachusetts ICC volunteers. You can find out more about Massachusetts COASTSWEEP here and about the raffles here. And if you don’t live in Massachusetts, fear not. There is an ICC event near you; find it here.