Heal the Bay hosted its 32nd annual Coastal Cleanup Day event with 2,735 volunteers cleaning up 35 sites across Southern California. For the last two decades, Heal the Bay volunteers have removed more than four million pieces of trash from Los Angeles County beaches. This year, organizers say volunteers picked up more than 5,000 pounds of trash on land. However, there are still eight million tons of plastic dumped into the oceans every year. Heal the Bay CEO Shelley Luce said discarded plastic has a direct impact on wildlife and climate change.
“Plastic is made from oil and when we drill from oil, we use fossil fuels and then we fuel this economy that also produces plastics,” Luce said. “We also produce greenhouse gases when we make plastic and then we have this product that gets used once or not at all and then ends up in the environment.”
The Coastal Cleanup Day happens once a year, but Janis Searles Jones, CEO of Ocean Conservancy, a partner organization for the annual event, said there are things consumers can do to help keep beaches and oceans clean year-round.
To read the full story, visit https://spectrumnews1.com/ca/la-west/environment/2021/09/19/heal-the-bay-volunteers-pick-up-more-than-5-000-pounds-of-trash-on-annual-coastal-cleanup-day.
Author: Renee Eng, Spectrum News 1
Image: Renee Eng, Spectrum News 1