In the 1980s, a small group of volunteers in Texas rallied their community together to take a day to clean up their coastal area. They organized a team and trekked a couple miles of beach to remove a few bags of trash from the shoreline. Thirty years later, over 100 countries will be participating in an effort now known as International Coastal Cleanup Day (part of World Cleanup Day).
Every year on the third saturday of September the world collectively attempts to clean the coast. Get out and do your part!
If you grab a bag and head toward water this weekend, you’ll be part of something much bigger than the average beach cleanup: you’ll be joining millions of volunteers in over 1000 locations around the world taking a moment to appreciate our oceans. You’ll partake in a grassroots yet global effort focused on our shared responsibility to preserve the bodies of water that give us life, purpose, and joy.
We’d love for you to join us! Click here to find a cleanup near you.
Tips to Make the Most of Your Day:
- Bring your children along and teach them about how ocean pollution harms sea life. Show them that cleaning up after yourself is easy and everyone’s responsibility.
- Get a friend or neighbor to join you and you’ve doubled your impact for the day!
- Use gardening or work gloves to protect yourself from hazardous or sharp materials. (These gloves are durable and reusable!)
- Bring a reusable bag instead of a plastic trash bag: Large canvas shopping bags, grain or animal feed bags, sand bags, and pillowcases are all generally easy to find. Contact your clean-up’s organizer to see if they have extras.
- After you’ve collected your haul, take a look through your bag of treasures. Do any of these items look familiar? Is there an item in there you use that you could replace with something reusable?
- You don’t need to live by a coast to participate! Creeks, rivers, watersheds, and lakes can all use our help too.
We hope to see your photos and social media posts this Saturday of the coasts you call home- please use the hashtag #CoastalCleanupDay and #PlasticPollutionPurge so we can see ASA’s collective impact! We also ask you to keep in mind that a good sailor always leaves a place cleaner than when they arrived.
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