Coastal cleanup Month 2023 Recap
Sable Odry, Coastal Programs Coordinator
2023 marked the NEC’s 44th year of Coastal Cleanup Day activities. Since the pandemic, the NEC has expanded coastal cleanup events across the entire month of September. However, Sep. 23 was announced as the official international Coastal Cleanup Day. In California alone we saw tens of thousands of volunteers participate statewide with over 130,000 pounds of trash removed by mid-afternoon. On Sep. 23 in Humboldt County, we coordinated with local nonprofits and volunteer groups to promote four different cleanup events from the Lost Coast to Humboldt Bay. Thank you to Friends of the Lost Coast, Surfrider Humboldt, Redwood Community Action Agency, and Cal Poly Humboldt Crew team for all hosting cleanups on Coastal Cleanup Day!
This year we are getting some help with our Coastal Cleanup Month data analysis while providing a learning opportunity for a Cal Poly Humboldt student. Luis Miguel Garcia (he/him) is a senior at Cal Poly Humboldt pursuing a major in Economics with a minor in Applied Statistics. “I’m currently enrolled in a service-learning course because it provides me the opportunity to bring a positive impact to my local community working with the NEC while developing my technical skills in data science. I am excited to become the first college-graduate in my family this summer, and maybe even get a job related to my degree in Humboldt County!”
In the midst of Luis’ analysis of Coastal Cleanup Month in Humboldt County, he has provided us with an assessment of the efforts from Coastal Cleanup Day.
Coastal Cleanup Day 2023 was successful in cleaning up over four miles of polluted lands, totaling around 742 pounds of trash and 29 pounds of recycled waste – that’s over 100 pounds more than the average weight of a California Sea Lion! Thanks to 81 amazing volunteers this year we were able to collect a low estimate of 1,865 pieces of trash from beaches, parks, and urban locations across northern California.
With six different categories used in our analysis, nearly half of all pollution collected this year can be classified into food and beverage packaging or tobacco and cannabis waste (figure 1). Cigarette butts were the most found trash item collected this year, accounting for 91.6 percent of all tobacco and cannabis waste at 328 recorded tallies (figure 2). Unfortunately, cigarette pollution was encountered frequently in all environmental settings (figure 3).
Miscellaneous trash is a category that involves waste that cannot be easily classified. 32.7 percent of all miscellaneous trash collected this year was nails and screws, making this the second most common trash item found at 210 tallies (figure 2). Most of the miscellaneous trash was found washed up on beach shores at a rate around 70 percent (figure 3).
We’re grateful for Luis’ assessment and look forward to providing an analysis of the whole month’s events in our December issue of EcoNews!
