More than 1,150 litter-busting volunteers collected 30,642 pounds of discarded garbage — including an abandoned 19-inch television and other oddball items — during Keep Brevard Beautiful’s 36th annual Trash Bash event.
From 8 a.m. to noon Saturday, bag-toting volunteers fanned out across about 40 sites from Titusville to Palm Bay, said Allison Arteaga, KBB volunteer and events coordinator.
“I think this was a great cleanup this year. We had excellent participation from the municipalities. A lot of people bought into this this year and really took a leadership role in helping us out. We got a lot of trash out of natural areas,” Arteaga said.
“A lot of these sites were land-based. We had people going out and cleaning up along roadways. They did parks. They did kayak cleanups in the lagoon and other tributaries. They were out on the beaches,” she said.
The city of Cocoa claimed the Trash Bash prizes for most volunteers (404) and most litter collected (13,681 pounds) among Space Coast municipalities, winning both for the second consecutive year.
Melbourne took second place in both categories with 352 volunteers and 8,261 pounds of litter.
“Those two teams always have excellent turnout and excellent litter removal. It’s always neck-and-neck between those two,” Arteaga said.
Cocoa and Melbourne finished heads and tails above their rival cities and towns. Satellite Beach took third place in volunteer turnout with 93, and Rockledge was third in litter removal with 1,420 pounds.
Volunteers at Kiwanis Island Park on Merritt Island were deemed the most efficient, collecting an impressive 35.3 pounds of trash per volunteer hour. The city of Palm Bay was second-most efficient with 16.7 pounds of trash per volunteer hour, narrowly besting the city of West Melbourne’s 16.4 pounds per hour.
The 19-inch television was discovered in Rockledge, where volunteers also found four tires and 10 pieces of metal rebar, each measuring 3 feet long. Cocoa Beach’s Thousand Islands yielded a barbecue grill, a sailboat rudder, 30 feet of yellow plastic pipe, a chair and numerous tennis balls. “Events like these are successes, based on participation in the community,” said Bryan Bobbitt, KBB deputy executive director. “And this year, we had a great turnout.”
To read the full story, visit http://www.floridatoday.com/story/news/2017/04/05/kbb-trash-bash-nets-30000-pounds-litter-across-brevard/100028116/.