COASTSWEEP 2011
Summary
Marine debris continues to be a problem in Massachusetts, as shown in the preliminary numbers from this year's COASTSWEEP cleanups. Data are still coming in, but numbers show that more than 2,200 volunteers cleaned almost 120 miles of coastline, collecting more than 17,700 pounds of trash! As usual, cigarettes topped the list of the most items found, totaling approximately 24,700. Surprisingly, volunteers also collected several thousand sewage disks released from the New Hampshire wastewater treatment facility in March of 2011.
The final 2011 totals are now available (PDF, 98 KB).
This year, COASTSWEEP celebrated the dedication of the Josiah Quincy Upper School, which has been sending students and teachers to COASTSWEEP events for more than four years. More than 200 students and teachers from the Josiah Quincy Upper School joined Richard Sullivan (Secretary of the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs), Edward Lambert (Commissioner of the Department of Conservation and Recreation), and Bruce Carlisle (Director of the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management) for a morning of beach cleaning on Carson Beach in South Boston. Together, they collected approximately 250 pounds of trash. Pictures of that event are available on the COASTSWEEP Facebook page and the State's Flicker page.
Please feel free to send pictures and stories from your event. Our favorite story so far comes from a Gloucester cleanup where a little girl used her birthday money to buy donuts for her fellow volunteers so that they would all have enough energy to clean the beach.
Also keep in mind that 2012 is the 25th anniversary of COASTSWEEP. We hope to make that the biggest year in the program's history, so start recruiting your volunteers now!
Thank you again to all who helped to make this year a success,
The COASTSWEEP Team