SANTA CRUZ COUNTY — Volunteers picking up trash along the Pajaro River on Saturday morning found a drone and a lawnmower, while those in the Watsonville Slough found a giant stuffed Snoopy doll.
Volunteers cleaning up Greyhound Beach north of Santa Cruz uncovered a plastic bag stuffed with 40 pounds of dirty diapers, according to Save Our Shores spokesman Ryan Kallabis.
“They had to dig it out because they had no idea what it was,” he said.
Those were among the more unusual items removed from local waterways during the 33rd annual Coastal Cleanup Day, during which volunteers gathered 7,611 pounds of trash, Kallabis said.
Teachers and students from New School Community Day School collected more than 50 pounds of trash from Watsonville Slough, teacher Bryan Love said.
According to Kallabis, 1,789 volunteers in Santa Cruz County removed 7,611 pounds of waste. In Monterey County, 1,024 volunteers removed 4,658 pounds of waste.
The workers spent part of their weekend at 77 beach, river and slough sites along an 85-mile stretch of coastline between northern Santa Cruz and Monterey counties.
Thanks in part to illegal dumping, workers at Lompico Creek and Upper Carr Lake removed 3,600 pounds of trash, Kallabis said.
Volunteers gathered 5,200 cigarette butts, with 1,071 coming from Capitola City Beach. Kallabis said.
In Watsonville, 262 volunteers removed more than 1,500 pounds of trash and recyclables from the watershed including the wetlands at Ramsay Park and Pajaro Valley High School (Watsonville and Struve sloughs), the Pajaro River at River Park, the City Plaza and surrounding streets, according to Rachel Kippen, environmental special projects coordinator for the city.
The cigarette butt cleanup at the City Plaza, a new site this year, retrieved more than 350 butts and was led by the Pajaro Valley Federation of Teachers, Mintie White Elementary, the Santa Cruz County Tobacco Education Coalition, and Pajaro Valley Prevention and Student Assistance.
“Coastal Cleanup Day is important, because it builds awareness,” said Natural Bridges Site Captain John Rible, who has been participating in the event for 25 years. “Our beaches are polluted because folks aren’t aware of the effects of trash.”
During his first year, Rible said he handed out snacks to the volunteers, who tossed the wrappers onto the same beach they had just cleaned.
“That was the first Coastal Cleanup Day though,” he said. “There was no awareness, no connection. It’s different now, kids are more aware and even telling us old folks to pick up after themselves.”
Statewide, more than 40,000 people collected nearly 300,000 pounds of trash from beaches, shorelines and inland waterways from the Oregon to Mexico borders and as far inland as Lake Tahoe, according to the California Coastal Commission.
California’s event is part of the International Coastal Cleanup organized by Ocean Conservancy.
“It was a remarkable day along the California coast and hundreds of miles of inland waterways,” said Jack Ainsworth, executive director of the California Coastal Commission. “Trash in our environment and in our ocean can cause enormous damage, and plastic fragments are known to travel up the food chain and potentially end up on our dinner plates. Californians turned out by the tens of thousands to help us combat this tide of trash.”
According to past cleanup data, 75 percent of the debris that volunteers removed was composed of plastic, a material that never truly biodegrades and has numerous harmful consequences in the environment. Plastic debris can kill wildlife, leach toxins into the environment, and even introduce them into the food chain, for years.
In an effort to reduce waste during the events, the Coastal Commission asked volunteers to bring their own reusable bag or bucket and reusable gloves to the event, rather than handing out disposable plastic items available at every site.
As a result, the commission ordered 200,000 fewer trash bags over the past four years, the Coastal Commission reported.
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For information, visit www.coast4u.org.
