Ocean Beach Ranks As One of Cleaner Beaches in 2012 – Up From the “Dirtiest”

4300 Volunteers Removed 7600 Pounds of Trash Last Year

Surfrider and Coastkeeper have just released data from their combined beach clean-ups for last year, 2012, and the news is that Ocean Beach has become one of the cleaner beaches. For the past three years, OB was the “dirtiest”.  But now we’ve beat out Mission Beach.  The new rankings are based on the amount of trash collected per volunteer during the different beach clean-ups.

For three years, the most trash per volunteer was collected at Ocean Beach. This year, Ocean Beach became one of the cleaner beaches, with just 0.73 pounds collected per volunteer. Mission Beach topped the list for 2012, with each volunteer collecting approximately 3.8 pounds of the total 941 pounds collected.

The two environmental organizations conduct twice-monthly beach cleanups throughout the county, and volunteers have helped remove over 43,000 pounds of trash from our beaches and waterways since 2007.

In 2012, 4,308 volunteers removed 7,594 pounds of trash, the groups’ second highest volunteer turn out to date. Work by the volunteers resulted in about 1.72 pounds being removed from the marine environment by each, whereas, in previous years, volunteers removed 0.60 pounds each.

Here’s a break-down of the trash removed from all County beaches in 2012 by Surfrider and Coastkeeper:

• 32% of collected debris was plastic. While less plastic was collected this year than 2011, many of the plastics found in 2012 were less than an inch in diameter.

• 80,000 more items of debris were collected than in 2011.  Most of debris in 2012 were small plastics, Styrofoam, and cigarette butts.

• Cigarette butts topped the list in 2012. Volunteers collected an all-time high of cigarette butts, topping 2011 by nearly 20,000.

• Plastic bags continue to be one of the less common items. Although only 3% of debris were plastic bags, there were over 7,500 collected. Limiting use of plastic bags should continue to be encouraged.

• Recycling could help as over 53,000 items of debris found were made of recyclable material.

Next OB Beach Clean-up: Ocean Beach Pier, Jan. 26 from 9 to 11am

Here is the Press Release:

Ocean Beach swings from dirtiest beach to one of this year’s cleanest beaches

San Diego Coastkeeper  and the Surfrider Foundation, San Diego Chapter—two of the region’s leading environmental organizations—announce results from their 2012 beach cleanup data collection. In 2012, more than 4,000 volunteers removed almost 7,600 pounds of trash, about an average of 1.7 pounds per person.

The two groups coordinate twice-a-month beach cleanups along San Diego’s coastline, rotating through popular beaches. This year, volunteers collected the most trash at Mission Beach while Ocean Beach traded its dirtiest ranking the last three years to become one of the cleaner beaches in 2012.

“We had more volunteers than ever proving that San Diego loves its beaches,” said Haley Jain Haggerstone, chapter coordinator for Surfrider San Diego. “Our 2012 beach cleanup data show that bigger trash items are finding their way to the proper receptacles, but it’s the smaller pieces of debris continuing to harm our beaches.”

According to 2012 data, cigarettes, Styrofoam fragments and plastics too small to be identified accounted for more than 60 percent of the debris collected. Of the 181,776 pieces of trash collected in 2012, nearly 40 percent was cigarette butts (a considerable increase from 2011). Plastic pieces accounted for 30 percent of the total number of items, including parts of bags, bottles, cups, straws, food wrappers and other miscellaneous plastic items.

With the amount of cigarette butts increasing at beach cleanups each year, both Coastkeeper and Surfrider have partnerships and campaigns dedicated to reducing the amount of cigarette waste polluting San Diego’s water.

“Rather than sending cigarette butts off to a landfill, Coastkeeper is registered with TetraCycle, a company that converts hard-to-recycle and non-recyclable materials into new products,” said Mallory Watson, community engagement coordinator for Coastkeeper. “At our beach cleanups this year, volunteers will collect cigarette butts in separate containers to remove them from the trash flow.”

Coastkeeper Waterkeeper Jill Witkowski has also joined forces with law professors and policy analysts from across the country through the Cigarette Butt Pollution Project to explore innovative legal and policy options for reducing cigarette butt waste.

Surfrider’s Hold On To Your Butts campaign actively prevents cigarette debris by installing outdoor ashcans throughout the county and distributing pocket ashtrays to smokers. According to Haggerstone, the ashtrays, along with community advocacy, have decreased cigarette butt litter by 65 percent.

Another geographical problem area last year, according to Haggerstone, is the large number of tires that volunteers removed from the Tijuana River during special cleanups aimed at removing trash from the river before the season’s first rains flush it to the ocean.

To help solve these pollution problems and volunteer at beach cleanups, interested community members and visitors can help at one of the 35 cleanups already in the works for 2013. Surfrider and Coastkeeper ask volunteers to bring their own reusable bags, gloves and water bottles. Volunteers can find the full cleanup schedule here.