Furniture, VHS tapes, a bicycle, a Frisbee with a “Recycle or DIE!” sticker and a voodoo doll were among the 42,000 pounds of trash and recyclables removed from 48 coastal cleanup sites Saturday, according to Orange County Coastkeeper.
The Costa Mesa-based nonprofit dedicated to keeping Orange County waters sustainable joined Trails4All in coordinating the local cleanups as part of Coastal Cleanup Day, which is apparently the world's largest trash pickup. They drew 6,900 volunteers throughout Orange County, adding to the 53,555 volunteers who picked up 614,188 pounds of trash at 900 sites statewide, according to Coastkeeper.
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“A year's worth of trash built up on Orange County's beaches, but thanks to our amazing volunteers and sponsors, Coastal Cleanup Day reversed some of that damage,” said Coastal Cleanup Director Courtney James. “Without supporters that believe in keeping our waters beautiful, all of that trash would float out into the ocean and harm its health.”
The Metropolitan Water District, OC Public Works, Spectrum Mechanical and Earth Friendly Products co-sponsored this year's cleanup.
Click here to learn more about Coastkeeper (and make sure to check out the very cool Coastkeeper Garden next to Santiago Canyon College in Orange).
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.