Clean Ocean Action held its annual beach sweeps all across the Jersey Shore yesterday, April 21st. In most places, such as that at the Sandy Hook beach cleanup, hundreds of people, activists, and volunteers arrived to help clean up the beaches.
We spent most of the morning documenting one of the most alarming invasions with our beaches, which is the abundant presence of plastic waste littered across them. In Sandy Hook beach in particular, the gravity of plastic pollution is unimaginable – it’s just pervasive, more so when you realize that marine life is nearby.
The volunteers were passionate about cleaning up the beaches, by not only picking up the litter, but also gathering meaningful data about the kinds of litter they’re finding, which will aid in Clean Ocean Action’s records.
Don’t forget to check out all of our photos from the beach sweep below, but more importantly, please do watch the informative PSA-style video above that highlights some of Clean Ocean Action’s initiatives. We interviewed both Cindy Zipf, Executive Director of Clean Ocean Action, as well as Alison McCarthy, the coastal watershed protection coordinator.
And remember, be mindful of how you discard plastics and other litter, not only at our local beaches, but in your every day lives – just because change begins with our habits.
