Volunteers Gear Up To Clean Up New Jersey Beaches For 32nd Annual Beach Sweeps
NEW JERSEY (CBS) -- Volunteers will fan out along the New Jersey coast on Saturday to pick up debris left on the beaches by people and Mother Nature for the 32nd annual Beach Sweeps an exercise in citizen science.
Clean Ocean Action's Tory Woods says crew captains have data cards to record what the volunteers pick up.
"So for example, in 2016, volunteers picked up over 332,000 pieces of debris," she said.
Woods says 80 percent of it was plastic, like bottles and straws, most of it in pieces.
"Plastics actually photo-degrade into smaller and smaller pieces, which are micro-plastics," she said.
Which pose hazards all the way up the food chain. Crews also find balloons, which can end up in animals' stomachs, and entangle them.
"We actually found a balloon that I believe traveled all the way from Louisiana," she said.
Sign up for Saturday's Beach Sweeps at cleanoceanaction.org. and even if you can't make it, Woods says,"everybody can make a difference by picking up litter anytime they see it."
