We love that so many of our guests and residents care about our coastline.
Case in point, many teamed up recently with the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation (SCCF) and Keep Lee County Beautiful to help with the 30th annual International Coastal Cleanup.
While we don’t have this year’s numbers in yet, more than 2,050 volunteers helped out across Lee County last year. Together, they removed 5,000 pound of litter and debris from our beaches.
Worldwide, the numbers are even more staggering. Ocean Conservancy, the host of the global event, notes that nearly 800,000 volunteers collected more than 18 million pounds of trash from around the world during the International Coastal Cleanup last year.
In Florida last year, 22,777 people took part, gathering 285,112 pounds of trash over 861 miles of coastline. The trash included nearly 229,000 cigarette butts, approximately 30,000 plastic bottles and just under 20,000 plastic bags.
Plastic is now the top concern for those who work at Ocean Conservancy. A new study shows that upwards of 12 million tons of plastics enter the ocean each year from land-based sources. Fish, birds and turtles can get entangled in plastic debris, or mistake plastic trash for food, leading to eventual starvation.
The majority of the items collected on Sanibel’s beaches last year were cigarette butts, plastic beverage bottles, food wrappers, plastic bottle caps, straws, plastic bags, glass beverage bottles, metal bottle caps and plastic lids.
For more information, or to find out how you can help, visit Ocean Conservancy.
