22 wonderful people cleaned up 5 bags of trash and 3 bags of recyclables (over 1500 pieces of debris) on a breezy spring day!
Top 3 items:
plastic straws 363
plastic bottle caps or lids 203
plastic pieces 192
Thank you all for coming and leaving footprints only while cleaning up trash!
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I have been remiss in posting last year 😅
Spring sweep day had some unexpected thunderstorms which canceled the April 1 sweep date. We then had a DIY beach sweep that weekend after the storms moved on and got the great news that the beach sweeps for going to be rescheduled for April 15. The date switching so quickly and unexpectedly made it hard for people to come out to the make up date, but we still had a small group of cheerful volunteers collect several bags of trash!
Fall 23 was a cloudy day but 18 people cleaned up 4 bags of trash and 4 of recyclables!
The top 3 items found were: plastic straws 418, plastic pieces 165 and cigarette filters 118
Thank you to everyone who came!
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On October 22 we had our beach clean up on Wildwood Avenue (just a temporary move due to construction on the boardwalk, the deck boards are being replaced!) and a small but mighty crew of 6 cleaned up 427 pieces of trash into one black bag of trash and one white bag of recyclables. Thank you!
Top 5:
Plastic pieces 81
Cigarette filters 80
Plastic bottle caps and lids 78
Plastic straws 33
Plastic cutlery 20
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Way to go! 34 people came together to clean up the beach on Poplar Ave in Wildwood and together they picked up 1,855 pieces of trash! There were 14 bags of trash and 13 bags of recyclables, tons of cardboard boxes and the oddest thing found: a Captain Morgan banner. Thank you to the students from Cape May Technical High School and Wildwood High School Eco Club and all the local volunteers!
Top 5:
Plastic straws/stirrers 170
Plastic bottle caps or lids 141
Plastic cutlery 118
plastic beverage and soda bottles 115
Plastic food and candy wrappers 105
and honorable mention would be metal beverage and soda bottles 104
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Be there! Just make sure you register first!
Locations in Cape May County and Atlantic County! For other counties check out this page of locations and FAQs before you register!
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Thank you to the volunteers that came out in a pandemic to clean the beach!
We were small group but a mighty group! 14 Volunteers cleaned the beach for a total of 1515 pieces of trash picked up resulting in 5 black bags of trash and 2 white bags of recyclables.
Top 5:
Food/Candy wrappers/bags 240
Plastic pieces 225
Bottle caps and lids 132
Nails 96
Straws 94
Of the top 5 items found, 4 of the items are plastic. The top 5 items total 787 pieces of trash, which is over half the total collected!
Wildwood High School Eco club came out and helped, and we got to check out some of the awesome signs they made and posted along the Wildwood boardwalk! Take a walk and see if you can spot them at the street ends, the art is beautiful and the message to keep our planet clean is just as beautiful!
Thank you to all the locals that came out and helped! You truly made a difference!!!
Posted in Beach Clean up, Green Tips, Save the Environment | Tagged Clean Ocean Action, clean ocean action beach sweep, clean the beach, volunteer, wildwood beach clean up | Leave a Comment »
April 22 is Earth Day!
Now you may be thinking “Earth Day? What does that even mean…? Why!?”
May I politely and gently remind you there are holidays about donuts and groundhogs and all sorts of things so the EARTH (you know this fabulous, beautiful place we live on that sustains our lives every moment with oxygen and food and water…) definitely deserves a day of celebration as well!
How can we celebrate and say thank you to the planet we live on?
As I am sure you may have guessed by now…I have several suggestions 🙂
1- Check out Earthday.org for virtual celebrations, events and ideas!
2-Take 20 minutes out of your day to appreciate the Earth and just steep yourself in it’s beatuy. Staring out the window of your house or car doesn’t count! Get out there in the air! Go some place you love, go some place new, take a walk on your lunch break! Take photos of beauty as you go, a sort of photo trek of your own invention!
3- Make a difference! Plant some seeds, buy a sapling or small tree to plant or adopt a house plant! You will be creating more oxygen for yourself and others!
4- Go to your favorite park, beach, or walk, and bring: gloves, a mask, hand sanitizer and a bag and pick up trash as you go. Leave it better than it was before your arrival!
5- Get stoked on Earth! Pick a destination you have always wanted to go to and/or pick an animal you always found sort of fascinating. Learn about them! Research unique places like the Galapagos Islands, or the Artic. Learn about amazing animals, like polar bears and chameleons and sea horses! Watch a program like Planet Earth or check out National Geographic programs or website articles.
6-Educate the next generation 🙂
Take a child on a nature safari or scavenger hunt to get them involving all senses in nature: have them look for an oak tree, feel moss, listen for a bird, taste green grass, smell mud!
Read them an Earth Day book or have them color pages celebrating nature!
(Some book suggestions that I like are: Fancy Nancy: Every day is Earth Day, by Jane O’Connor- The Earth Book, by Todd Parr- What a Waste, by Jess French- Curious George Plants a Tree by Margaret and H.A. Reys and The Berenstain Bears Go Green by Jan and Mike Berenstain)
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It is that time of year again!
Clean Ocean Action is holding their beach clean ups on Saturday April 17, from 9- 12:30 like usual.
There are a few things that are done differently due to the pandemic. All persons attending MUST register before they come, and sign a waiver. (Minors must have a parent/guardian register for them, you cannot register for a group anymore as each person needs to sign a waiver!)
Besides that, please wear a mask and bring gloves and social distance per our state’s guidelines, choose an arrival time (9 am or 10am) and then carry on saving the environment like you always do!
Register here, read the FAQs here, and find a full list of locations here!
Hope to see you all on our beautiful expansive beaches for some social distance, save the environment awesomeness!
Here are Atlantic County and Cape May County locations:
Posted in Beach Clean up, Uncategorized | Tagged Clean Ocean Action, Clean Ocean Action Beach Sweeps, clean the beach, volunteer | Leave a Comment »
So you know how we are still in a pandemic? (Although I am guessing no one forgot… ! )
Lots of folks are looking for fun things and activities to do at home, and I have got a good one for you!
How would you like to do something different, fun and memorable, and help the earth while you are doing it?
Seems like a win win right?!
This Saturday, March 27, at 8:30 pm switch off all of your lights for an hour. (unless they are necessary for safety)
You may think: That’s not an activity… that is a punishment!
Let me explain 🙂
From Earth Hour’s Mission page:
Started by WWF and partners as a symbolic lights-out event in Sydney in 2007, Earth Hour is now one of the world’s largest grassroots movements for the environment. Held every year on the last Saturday of March, Earth Hour engages millions of people in more than 180 countries and territories, switching off their lights to show support for our planet. But Earth Hour goes far beyond the symbolic action of switching off – it has become a catalyst for positive environmental impact, driving major legislative changes by harnessing the power of the people and collective action.
Pretty cool right? So by turning your lights off for one hour on a Saturday night, you are becoming part of something bigger than you are, a movement full of other people who care about the environment!
You may think: Ok…that sounds like an easy way to be environmentally friendly…but you are still asking me to sit in the dark for an hour? That doesn’t sound fun…
Absolutely not! Have you ever gone camping? There are no electric lights there and you still have fun! Here are some ideas you can try. Some are my own, and some are from Earth Hour’s stay at home activity idea article! (you can also find a ton more there!)
Light a ton of candles and try to do regular routine things like: shower, exercise, and cook/eat dinner. You will gain a whole new appreciation for your electric AND you can laugh and have fun as you do it!
Try yoga or puzzles or playing games like charades or heads up by candle light
You saw me mention camping…how about you camp in your living room? If you have little ones they will surely have a blast! Give them a battery powered lantern to carry around, make a pretend fire with a battery operated candle flame and some red/yellow and orange tissue paper, make pretend marshmellows on sticks with pencils and cotton balls! (Or give them real marshmellows on a fork for a treat 🙂 )
If you have little ones and don’t want to camp, there are other fun options like having a flashlight scavenger hunt for hidden objects around the house, or the classic game of making shadow puppets on the wall
Why not write down a few story topics and put them in a dish, and have each person draw and then share a memory about the topic? A relaxed take on scary campfire stories and you may learn new things about your family that you didn’t know before!
The possibilities are endless 🙂 What does your family like to do in the evenings? Can you find a way to do it with the lights out, and make it fun? Even if it ends up a total disaster…you just made a fun memory to look back on and a new appreciation for how easy to do it is with electric!
So what do you say? Would you like to join me and tons of others this Earth Hour?
I hope you do!
Posted in CALL TO ACTION, Save the Environment | Tagged Earth Hour, earthhour.org, stay at home activity, weekend fun | Leave a Comment »
Ah… New Years! The birth of a fresh start, a new year, an opportunity to repeatedly write the wrong date because you aren’t used to it yet…and the dreaded or highly anticipated or totally ignored New Years resolutions!
But listen. A resolution doesn’t have to be scary, or huge, or monumental. It can be just a small goal, you take baby steps toward the whole year. You might even take a few steps back, it happens! But really it is just bringing a goal or thought to the forefront of your mind, so that you can include it in your life. Not so scary!
Caring about the environment can be a goal, and it doesn’t have to be huge.
It can be as simple as picking a house in your room, and looking at it with fresh eyes.
The kitchen. How much trash do you throw away each day? How many plastic items do you have/use? Do you use disposable or single use items frequently? Try to compost your food scraps; try to buy items at the grocery store with less disposable packaging, and more recyclable packaging. Try to replace worn out plastic items with things like glass, metal or wood. Try to reduce or get rid of single use items completely (or reserve them for guests or special occasions only) Yes that means more dishes 😉 but really thats all the extra effort it will take to use ceramic plates, glasses and your silverware! Make it a family project, I can’t tell you how many awesome conversations I have had over the sink with my family members, with one of us washing, one of us drying, and one of us putting away. It can be fun!
The bathroom. How many items in a bathroom are plastic? How many are recyclable? Can you reduce the amount of plastic by using bar soap, wash clothes, solid shampoo/conditioner, bamboo toothbrushes, charcoal flossers? Can you reuse some of the plastic there?
Bedrooms. When you get the itch to spring clean (Anyone? No? Just me?) Try having a yardsale, or donate items to friends, family, churches, community centers, or donation bins and non profits. Don’t just throw stuff in the trash that will end up in a landfill! Try to extent the item’s life as long as you can, plus you can help other folks while you do it!
Not too bad right? It has taken me only 10 minutes of writing so far to share these ideas, so I bet you could think these thoughts about your own house in the same amount of time, and over the course of the next few months and this year, slowly make some changes in your household that will help the environment!
I also bet you could come up with even more or better ideas than these ones!
Give it a try?
Posted in Green Tips | Tagged green house, Green Living, green thinking, Green Tips, new years resolutions | Leave a Comment »
Green without the scene 