Earth Day is April 22nd, how will you leave it better than you found it? For our Inter-Coastal clean up on Saturday April 19th we had 25 people and a dozen boats that cleaned up almost .75 miles of the Inter-Coastal Waterway from the South Venice Beach Ferry heading North to Red Lake. The goal was to clean 1.3 linear miles and 2.5 miles total but we didnt make it that far in our 6 hour time limit. We collected the following items: 83 beer/ soda cans 194 plastic bottles 109 pieces of Styrofoam 70 household items 24 pieces of construction items 4 tires and an inner tube 8 paper items 2 destroyed crab traps 389 pieces of plastic 53 glass bottles 29 fishing related items 20 pieces of clothing 15 liquor bottles 39 single shoes or shoe parts, we never did find a match 30 balls ranging from tennis, baseball, plastic balls. The strangest items collected were a TV, a 5 gallon hot water heater, and 2 road barricades. On our exploratory trip several weeks ago 4 people collected 156 lbs. of trash over the same area. We did not catalog those items by type. On this trip we collected 663 lbs. ***Totals*** Personnel: 29 5 canoes and 10 kayaks Service Hours: 183 Trash Collected: 819 lbs. This project counted for several organizations: Earth Day 2014 Keep Sarasota County Beautiful - 2014 Great American Clean Up Leave No Trace: Center for Outdoor Ethics - lnt.org Boys Scouts of America - Good Turn for America and my State College of Florida - Oceanography final project. I hope I get a good grade. A special thanks to Scott of Black Water/ Blue Water Tours. He put a half dozen boats in the water for us. Scott is a Florida Master Naturalist Guide. Check out his Facebook page at https://facebook/blackwaterbluewatertours or call him at 941-416-4377. Special thanks to the following groups for whom without this effort would not have been as successful: Boy Scout Troop & Venture Crew 26 of Englewood, Boy Scout 311 of South Venice, and finally my usual cast of willing friends and a few new ones. And Thank You to Waste Management who will be making a special trip to my house tomorrow morning to pick everything up. For those of you that missed this event we will be organizing another one on September 20th in concert with the 2014 International Coastal Clean Up. Between now and then, do the world a favor. Pick up one piece of trash a day. Dont thank me for the groups effort. We are just trying to leave it better than we found it, for our kids, and theirs. Brett Chat Conversation End
Posted on: Mon, 21 Apr 2014 11:35:37 +0000