On Saturday, July 20th, we headed over to Clearwater Beach to volunteer for another beach cleanup that was organized by 4Ocean and Air Canada. If you’re not yet familiar with them, 4Ocean is a company that sells bracelets made from recycled material, while at the same time organizing ocean clean up efforts and educational programs. 4Ocean pledges to pull one pound of plastic from the ocean for every bracelet they sell. While they’re not a non-profit organization, they do have a good reputation, and deliver on that promise.
Volunteering for a 4Ocean cleanup does get you one of these bracelets for a free too, which is a sweet little perk and a $20 value.
Want to support 4Oceans mission by buying a bracelet? There’s a big selection of colors and causes to support! You can buy a bracelet here: 4Ocean on Amazon
We arrived at Clearwater Beach just before 8:30, signed in along with about a thousand other volunteers and we were each issued a pair of gloves, a burlap sack, and just set loose on the beach to find whatever trash we could.
We decided to head down to beach a bit, down toward the fishing pier with the idea that there might be the most junk down there to help pick up. The pier has the most people traffic, with people fishing, tourists hanging out, and nightly events that would probably make it a magnet for beach trash. And we were right.
Around the pier we found rusty fishhooks, lots of plastic bottles and cans that people had shoved into wedges in the pier, and even an old boxcutter. Fishhooks and bare feet aren’t a great mix, and it’s a bummer to see people just tossing that stuff off the pier.
Clearwater Beach is big, and crowded. It didn’t take long at all before a few hundred volunteers were scattered all over the beach. Some from our group headed all the way down to the rock jetty at the end of the beach and volunteers down at that end were even pulling old buoys and crab traps out of the rocks.
After about 2 short hours, the temperature already started to soar. This is Florida in July, and the morning started off beautiful, but by 11am the event was winding down and it was almost time for lunch. A peak into our burlap sack revealed what we thought was a decent little dent in getting some litter off the beach.
Now bringing our bags back to the big dump-off area is where it really gets eye opening. Looking around and talking to other volunteers, we found that most people really didn’t have that much stuff in their bag, but everybody had at least a little something. On the surface, the beach was actually pretty clean and it was hard to find much at the start. A cigarette butt here, a plastic spoon there, and after a couple hours most people’s burlap sack was still fairly empty.
And then you see what the results of everybody doing just a little can look like..
A big tarp laid and covered in trash shows what can happen when lots of people just do a little bit. According to the final tally, this cleanup brought in 1,129 volunteers and collected:
Plastic cups: 140
Plastic cutlery: 146
Beach toys: 226
Plastic bottles: 410
Styrofoam pieces: 441
Metal bottle caps: 610
Plastic straws: 759
Plastic bags: 805
Plastic bottle caps: 1,996
Cigarette butts: 19,225
Not bad for a few hours spent on a beautiful Florida morning with friends at what a some say is the beach beach in America.
Interested in volunteering for a 4Ocean beach cleanup? Check out their website for more info and their Community Cleanup Calendar: https://4ocean.com/cleanup-calendar
They post events and info all time on social media as well.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/4oceanBracelets
Twitter: https://twitter.com/4OceanBracelets
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/4ocean
