More than 700 volunteers, armed with trash bags, gloves and hand sanitizers, fanned out across the county to clean up other people’s trash at the 31st annual Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup, coordinated locally by Keep Indian River Beautiful (KIRB).
A mind-boggling 6,000 pounds of trash was collected last year from Indian River County beaches and parks, the Indian River Lagoon shoreline and spoil islands.
Overall, in 2015, this world’s largest one-day cleanup effort netted more than 18 million pounds. Dubious honors to the top 10: cigarette butts, plastic beverage bottles, food wrappers, plastic bottle caps, straws/stirrers, general plastic bags, glass beverage bottles, plastic grocery bags, metal bottle caps and plastic lids, along with another 3 million tiny trash pieces, of the sort often ingested by marine life.
2016 marine litter numbers will be tracked and included in the Ocean Conservancy’s Ocean Trash Index.
