September 16 Clean Sweep - A Success!
Some of you may wonder what Hanford Bay residents do once Labor Day has past. They collect plastics and other materials that don’t belong on the beach!
On September 16th, 32 residents met on the beach end of the Moran Road Right-of-Way. There were many people returning for another sweep of the beach as well as several new people. The weather was fine and the mood of the beach sweepers was upbeat with a strong desire to rid our beautiful beach of undesirable items. Delicious donuts were available to help the sweepers gain more energy for the work ahead of them. Each volunteer was given a Hanford Baykeepers sticker as a reward for being there.
Members of the Hanford Baykeepers had already set out and labeled several collection containers to help the beach sweepers sort out what they found on the beach. The sorting of the found items is important, because the Hanford Baykeepers report the collected waste to the Ocean Conservancy, an international organization that works with millions of volunteers around the world to fight for trash free seas and other bodies of water such as the Great Lakes.
After a member of the Hanford Baykeepers provided some instruction on what to look for and how the collected items will be reported to the Ocean Conservancy via the Clean Swell App, the beach sweepers grabbed their buckets and spread out across the length of the beach.
It wasn’t long before some of them returned with filled buckets and the sorting of their discoveries began. Almost immediately it was realized that items were being found that required more collection containers be set out to properly categorize them. For example, thousands of pieces of fireworks were collected. The pieces were mostly paper and cardboard, but also there were many plastic tubes that would have added to the pollution of Lakes Erie and Ontario.
After about two hours of effort, the beach sweepers finished collecting items on the beach and sorting them into appropriate categories for the Hanford Baykeepers to use for reporting the results to the Ocean Conservancy via the Clean Swell App.
Here are the highest count categories of what was collected that day:
1211 pieces: Other waste (metal, paper, etc.)
1137 pieces: Tiny plastic pieces (less than the size of a quarter)
Over 200 pieces each: Plastic bottle caps, food wrappers, other plastic waste (larger than a quarter and unidentified)
In total, 3005 items were collected that day including 183 cigarette butts which contain microplastics in the filters and 76 balloons that would have degraded into microplastics waste material if left on the beach or in the water.
The Hanford Baykeepers sincerely thank all the participants who helped make the September 2023 Clean Sweep the most successful and biggest beach cleanup thus far. Each of this year’s beach sweeps had more participants than the previous cleanup and each sweep resulted in more plastic and other waste items being collected. This shows that as more people join the cleanups, more waste is collected and eliminated as pollutants in the lake or its shores.
The Hanford Baykeepers look forward to 2024 being an even more successful year for beach sweeps!
Expect at least two cleanups next year. Details about them will be posted before the 2024 summer season in the Upcoming Events section of this website.
