On Saturday, June 5th, twelve members and friends from UCF took part in a beach cleanup at Ft. Macon State Park to participate in World Ocean Day. The cleanup was sponsored by the Green Sanctuary and Social Action Committees and Carteret Big Sweep. Many thanks to Dee Smith from Carteret Big Sweep for the loan of the buckets, grabbers, gloves, and trash bags! Many of us hadn’t seen each other for over a year! We had a great time reconnecting, enjoying the beach as well as cleaning up the environment.
We spent nearly two hours on the beach and covered over 2 miles collecting trash. One group went east, and the other group went west. When we reconvened, it didn’t look like we had collected much trash and we were all surprised we didn’t find more. In total, we collected 17.8 pounds of trash. Mostly plastic pieces, food wrappers, cigarette butts, and building materials. The good news is we didn’t find any single-use plastic bottles or single-use grocery bags.
