Coastal Cleanup Day brings in tons of trash

Tribune Content Agency

More than 510,000 pounds of trash was plucked from the state’s beaches, ocean, rivers, parks, lakes and other areas as part of Saturday’s 33rd annual California Coastal Cleanup Day, according to early tallies.

From left, Kiki Patsch from Newbury Park and her two daughters Nellie and Larkin help collect trash Saturday during Coastal Cleanup Day efforts near Mugu Rock.

An additional 31,912 pounds of recyclables was collected by nearly 1,000 volunteer sites in 55 counties, the largest number of sites in the cleanup’s history.

Around the state, 54,532 volunteers helped with the cleanup, said Eben Schwartz, marine debris program manager for the California Coastal Commission.

California’s event is part of the International Coastal Cleanup organized by the Ocean Conservancy. It’s dubbed the “world’s biggest volunteer effort to protect the ocean,” with an estimated half-million people around the world participating.

“It was a remarkable day along the California coast and hundreds of miles of inland waterways,” Jack Ainsworth, executive director of the Coastal Commission, said in a statement. “Trash in our environment and in our ocean can cause enormous damage, and plastic fragments are known to travel up the food chain and potentially end up on our dinner plates. Californians turned out by the tens of thousands to help us combat this tide of trash.”

The “winners” for most unusual items unearthed Saturday include a pack of unopened business shirts in a zip-lock bag found by a volunteer in Los Angeles County, and several house-arrest bracelets scooped up in Northern California, according to the Coastal Commission.