CLICK HERE if you are having a problem viewing the photos on a mobile device
It’s an annual tradition as summer turns to fall, just like high school football and picking pumpkins.
Saturday is supposed to be Coastal Cleanup Day. But the coronavirus pandemic has turned the largest volunteer event in California upside down, just as it has with so many other facets of life. The event isn’t cancelled, but it’s different.
For the first time in the 36-year history of Coastal Cleanup Day there will be no organized groups handing people bags and helping them record what they found on the third Saturday of September. Instead, the California Coastal Commission, which organizes the event every year, is asking people to fly solo.
Volunteers have been asked to bring their own bags to beaches, creeks and even their own neighborhoods over the month, especially on Saturday mornings. They should wear gloves and also masks if they are going to be near other people. And they are being asked to record what they find on a free app called Clean Swell that they can download to their phones, so that organizers can continue to track litter trends across the state.
The annual cleanup drew more than 74,000 people last year — families, corporate groups, scouting troops — who pitched in to remove more than 900,000 pounds of garbage to beautify the outdoors and help wildlife along beaches, creeks, rivers and lakes in nearly all of California’s 58 counties.
But that isn’t advisable this year.
“We don’t want to encourage 1,000 people to meet at Ocean Beach in San Francisco, like we have in the past,” said Eben Schwartz, marine debris program manager for the Coastal Commission. “The idea of spreading out the cleanup effort over a month and discouraging groups in specific sites is to keep people safe.”
Much of California’s beach debris doesn’t originate on the coast. People drop or throw trash on the street, and it washes or blows into storm drains, which flow into creeks and rivers, eventually emptying into the ocean. The debris, particularly plastic, not only makes the state’s beaches look messy, but it also can kill wildlife, like fish, birds and sea turtles, which eat it or become entangled in it.
The idea of the cleanup every September is to remove as much as possible along the coast and in inland counties before winter rains wash it toward the ocean.
But with shelter-in-place orders and group gatherings restricted, many smaller cleanups that usually occur earlier in the year haven’t happened.
“This work is critical,” Schwartz said. “It’s more critical now than any time I can remember. Our outdoor recreation spaces are one of the few places left to us for escape and exercise. All of the trash is just piling up. I’ve heard reports from all parts of the state that our parks, trails, rivers and creeks are just trashed.”
Should you be worried about getting COVID-19 from picking up fast food wrappers, cigarette butts, or empty soda cans along a creek or beach? Not really, say experts.
Coronavirus spreads much more easily indoors than outdoors, and from people who are infected transmitting airborne particles to others through talking, coughing or sneezing in enclosed spaces.
Studies have shown that the virus can remain infectious on surfaces for about 24 hours. It is possible that a person can get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their mouth, nose, eyes, but this isn’t the main way the virus spreads, according to the FDA.
“If people practice good hand hygiene, there should not be a risk,” said Dr. John Swartzberg, a professor emeritus at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health.
That means wearing gloves while picking up trash, and using hand sanitizer afterward, he said. Also, people should only do the cleanup in groups of family members or others they live with.
Since the Coastal Cleanup began, more than 1.6 million volunteers have removed over 26 million pounds of trash as part of the largest volunteer event in the state.
From 1988 to 2016, the most common item collected was the cigarette butt — more than 7.5 million of them statewide, and 37% of all the items collected. Second were food wrappers and containers, at 10%, and third were caps and lids, representing 9%. Also commonly found were paper and plastic bags, cups, plates and utensils, straws and glass bottles.
To find out how to join the cleanup effort this year, please visit www.coastalcleanupday.org.
In most counties, nonprofit organizations or government agencies, such as Save Our Shores in Santa Cruz, Heal the Bay in Los Angeles, the Santa Clara Valley Water District in San Jose or the East Bay Regional Park District in Alameda County, are helping coordinate volunteers as they have in past years.
Already, according to the Clean Swell app, more than 2,000 volunteers have cleaned more than 1,000 locations in California since Sept. 1, Schwartz said.
“Every year this is the time we make the biggest push to get trash out of our environment, and out of the ocean,” he said. “We can’t afford to take a year off.”
