The 30th Annual Alabama Coastal Cleanup
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Alabama Coastal Cleanup, the state's largest one-day volunteer event, returns for its 30th year on Saturday, September 16. Residents, visitors, individuals and organizations are invited to “get the trash out of the splash” by picking up trash littering Alabama coasts and waterways from 8 a.m. to noon. Volunteers are needed on foot and on water.
An exciting addition to this year’s 30th annual cleanup will be an effort to incorporate enhanced recycling opportunities for trash collected during the cleanup event. Alabama Coastal Cleanup, with support from Weeks Bay Foundation, Thompson Engineering, and Alabama Coastal Foundation, will partner with the TerraCycle Company to provide plastics recycling at cleanup zones. TerraCycle offers free recycling programs funded by brands, manufacturers, and retailers around the world to help collect and recycle hard-to-recycle waste, such as washed-up trash found along beaches and shorelines.Given the recent recognition of the harmful effects of marine debris in the environment, it is important to remove and recycle plastics from waterways.
In 2016, over 4,200 volunteers collected close to 36,700 pounds of trash from cleanup sites located from Gulf Shores to Dauphin Island. Since trash totals were collected at the first Alabama Coastal Cleanup in 1987, more than 1.6 million pounds of trash have been collected and disposed of properly. Volunteers are needed at 30 different cleanup sites in Mobile and Baldwin counties. Alabama Coastal Cleanup provides a t-shirt and clean up supplies to participants who collect trash. For more info, go to www.AlabamaCoastal-Cleanup.com or call (251) 928-9792