Surfrider Foundation: MAKING WAVES, Making Coastal Clean-Ups Count


	Making Coastal Clean-Ups Count James J. Powlik, Ph.D. Surfrider Foundation, Capitol Chapter MAKING WAVES, Aug./Sept. 1998

In the past two decades, the environmental movement has done much to increase awareness of solid pollutants, megalitter, and other waste materials on public beaches and coastlines. Beach clean-up and trash removal activities have blossomed across the country and local ecosystems reap the rewards of such organized community efforts, if only once a year.
While the origin of many pollutants is hidden or ill-defined, coastline litter comes from two obvious sources: beachgoers themselves and the flotsam discarded from passing ships. The anecdotal accounts of some clean-up ventures are worth noting, if only for their shock value:

In Texas, 15,000 plastic six-pack templates were collected from 300 miles of coastline
In Oregon, 26 tons of trash was collected in 3 hours
In North Carolina, 8000 plastic bags were collected in 3 hours
2000 pieces of plastic were collected from a local beach on Earth Day

     Such "factoids" or "scare statistics" are popular for brochures and may catch the media's interest for a sound bite, but what do they really tell us? Certainly the coastal area (as in the Texas example) is as important as the length of shoreline. How many workers were collecting for those 3 hours in Oregon and what comprised their "trash"? If "8000 plastic bags" were collected in North Carolina, what size and type were they and how many were left? What constitutes a "piece" of plastic and Earth Day of which year? How long had it been since someone had cleaned up any of these areas and how long was it until similar amounts of trash accumulated again? These are questions needing valid answers if we are to determine the true health of our coastlines and formulate prescriptive measures.
     The environmental impact of any contaminant - including litter - can be evaluated on the basis of its concentration and frequency of introduction into a natural system. But once the obvious eyesores are removed and the platoons of litter-pickers return home to await next Earth Day, how much more do we really know about reducing future amounts of shoreline trash? How can we better prepare, legislate, and contain coastal pollution before it even enters the waste stream?
     To begin with, we can collect better data.
     The debate is not new. The scientific community (and, increasingly, funding agencies) urge environmental groups to take a more quantified approach to their programs and surveys, while environmentalist seek more serious attention to what they've seen first-hand in the field, often to the exclusion of highly relevant details. What is it, really, that they have seen, and what can best be considered a scientifically or economically tangible and defensible pollution problem? The publication of accurate, informative, and statistically relevant data about coastal pollution is a good first step to inform and appease both sides. Certainly, without at least some attention to the specific kinds of litter being collected, much worthwhile information is being lost, ultimately and ironically becoming only as useful as so much trash.
     Not All Trash is Created Equal
     In difference to the old teaser, "which weighs more, a ton of bricks or a ton of feathers?," the weight of material collected may be incidental to the type, volume, or surface area of litter. Microscopic organisms that live between sand grains will doubtfully be crushed by "a ton" of trash, but they might easily be suffocated by "24 square yards of sheet polyethylene plastic," which would comprise but a fraction of that ton and only a single "piece" of plastic.
     Plastics of one type or another comprise a tremendous fraction of coastal litter and some 10% of the 11 million tons of solid waste discharged into U.S. coastal waters each year. Discarded plastic includes products as diverse as medical waste, condoms, diapers, sanitary napkins, food containers, fishing gear, driftnets and manufacturing byproducts - "pieces" that produce markedly different visceral reactions. As lightweight, often colorful materials, they float easily into public view and, accordingly, are probably oversampled in censuses of coastal trash (along with aluminum cans and glass containers) due to their high visibility and relative recyclable value. Conversely, paper products, cigarette butts, building materials, and liquid pollutants are less obvious and more difficult to collect or "count."
     Manufacturers will cite example after example of the recyclable materials they now use in packaging, effectively deferring the blame for litter to the consumer. Unless the material is actually conserved and recycled, there is hardly a benefit to it being "recyclable." An item of trash buried away from light and oxygen will not benefit from biodegradation or photo-oxidation at nearly the same rate as an exposed counterpart - and for many materials, including plastics, not even then.
     Even very similar plastics can have markedly different hydrocarbons and stabilizing agents in them. Disposal of plastics has, until recently, been impeded by improper labeling of the material, since many products cannot be safely incinerated without knowing their chemical composition. Because of the composite nature of plastics, most have to be coded to forewarn incinerators of potential offgassing. The coding of plastic packaging is a boon for data-conscious beach collectors, since we can now look at the plastic code on the material (usually a number stamped inside the pyramid-style recycling logo) and record the amount of each plastic type.

What You Can Do
Here's a list of simple improvements you can add to your next coastal clean-up project to help ensure what you've done is at least properly recorded. Once the data has been obtained, the sky's the limit on how it can be compiled and disseminated to identify and publicize the real health of our coastal waterways, where the trash has come from, and how to properly dispose of it.

Use quantified survey questionnaires such as the Surfrider Foundation Beach Mapping Questionnaire to define your sampling area.
Record, at least approximately, the number of volunteers, their assigned tasks, and the duration of the work. This will help to extrapolate rates and measures for wider-scale efforts.
Differentiate your trash collection into many categories (within reason!). Especially include the kind of material (e.g, brown, green, and clear glass, "plastic grocery bag," "small Styrofoam cup", soda can, beer can, plastic containers sorted by code). Check with your local recycling depot to get industry-standard designations for the materials collected and be consistent in your descriptions.
Assign someone to monitor and record the material collected as precisely as possible, from generic data on the work crews to more detailed information such as the weight, volume, and surface area of the various materials collected. To reduce subjective interpretation (and keep as many people as possible actually picking-up!), limit the number of data recorders to a qualified and enthusiastic few.
Be aware of possible biases in the kinds of materials counted/not counted in your clean-up and note these observations.
Use local newspapers, newsletters, professional journals, or school programs to publicize and disseminate your results. As appropriate, properly cite all references or sources for your facts and assertions.

Finally, it must be remembered that litter problems are not limited to well-frequented, public coastlines. Travel to virtually any remote island or isolated embayment and you will find flotsam and domestic debris from passing ships, if not trash discarded from some abandoned campsite. The tide is clearly indifferent to what it deposits on the shore. It is up to us to be less indifferent in our description of what we find there.

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