The country’s 250th birthday celebrations were bigger than ever. But once the parties were over and the fireworks had faded, a less-than-festive reality set in: trash everywhere. Each year, our beaches are left littered with remnants of the day before, which is why the Fifth of July has come to be known as the Dirtiest Beach Day of the Year.
Luckily for our coasts and ocean, Surfrider Foundation activists across the country were ready and came out in droves to pick up the trash left behind every year. This year, 37 different Surfrider chapters in 13 states hosted over 50 cleanup events!
1,800 volunteers removed over 16,000 pounds of trash and recyclables in just one day! We’d like to give a huge thank you to everyone who was able to head out and clean up their community after the holiday celebrations.
While we’re still compiling the results, we’ve already noticed some trashy trends from our cleanup data. The top items found during Dirtiest Beach Day cleanups were fireworks, cigarette butts, plastic fragments, and lots of plastic foodware, including takeout containers, food wrappers, plastic bottles and caps, and straws.
The data is clear - plastic on our beaches is a huge problem. And while following Surfrider’s tips for a plastic-free holiday is incredibly important to preventing pollution, widespread change will only happen when we broaden our approach. The solution to plastic pollution lies in a combination of better public awareness, consumer choices, and policies at the local and state levels to reduce the amount of single-use plastic items produced in the first place.
If you have not yet supported Surfrider’s work to keep our coasts and ocean plastic-free, please consider joining us as a member today. Thank you for keeping our coasts clean and for being a friend of the ocean.
As Healthy Beaches Programs Manager, Jennifer oversees the national Beach Cleanup Program and other healthy beaches initiatives. She graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara, with a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Studies.