You Can Help Clean Up Ocean Plastic on Coastal Cleanup Day

About 10 thousand volunteers are expected to spend three hours on Saturday, September 19, picking up trash at more than 50 spots along Los Angeles County beaches and inland waterways today, as part of the 26th Annual Coastal Cleanup Day.

We thank and commend all those who participate in the worldwide Coastal Cleanup.

Coastal Cleanup Day participants in Los Angeles have collected more than a million pounds of trash – roughly the weight of a fully loaded Boeing 747, according to Heal the Bay. A significant amount of plastic floating in ocean gyre patches like the so-called “great Pacific Garbage Patch” is ejected from the gyre each cycle, after which it can wash ashore temporarily. “The cleanup is so important, it’s our one chance a year to get people in every corner of California out to their local beaches or waterways to clear the trash before the rains start”. You can find the cleanup sites closest to you on the Coastal Cleanup website. The organization encourages volunteers to wear closed-toe shoes and to bring sunscreen, a refillable water bottle, bucket for trash, hats and gardening gloves, if possible.

As volunteers clean up the coasts on Friday and Saturday, beaches that already have earned the global “Blue Flag” certificate for environmental excellence will be adopting other beaches that have not yet earned this status, the Environmental Protection Ministry said. Statewide activities are part of global Coastal Cleanup, the largest volunteer event on the plant, which is organized by the Ocean Conservancy.

“With El Niño coming up after five years of drought, what we’re looking at is a situation where we have a lot of historic trash in creek beds, riverbeds and lakebeds that were covered”.